ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures (CenSoF)

Description

The ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures (CenSoF) is a research centre based at the University of Bristol and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Founded in 2022, it investigates how society and digital technology are increasingly bound together, a condition it calls sociodigital, and asks how the futures being imagined and built with digital technologies can be made fairer and more sustainable. Led by the University of Bristol with partner universities across the UK and internationally, it organises its work around five domains of sociodigital practice (caring, consuming, learning, moving and organising), four technical affordance projects (artificial intelligence; augmented, virtual and mixed reality; high performance networks; and robotics), a set of interconnecting threads, and a Futures Studio for experimental, participatory futures-making. Its research runs across arts, media and cultural strands, including the changing place of television, media literacies with young people, immersive public futures developed with artists and museum leaders, design futures produced with the London College of Communication, and community technology and creative workshops, alongside work on education, predictive analytics in children's social care, communities and digitised borders.

Follow the centre on Bluesky and LinkedIn.

Currently active

Yes

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

2022

Contact details

On the map

Go to larger version of this map

Categorisation

Type

Tags

University affiliation(s)

University of Bristol
Bristol

Partner Universities

Goldsmiths, University of London

Lancaster University

University of Birmingham

University of Edinburgh

University of Exeter

University of Oxford

University of the Arts London

Additional Partnerships

BT Group; Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra); Locality; Maybe*; National Cyber Security Centre; University of Naples Federico II; The New School for Social Research; University of New South Wales; Oslo Metropolitan University; Stellenbosch University; UNESCO