About

How can we live well with new and emerging technologies? 

 Using approaches from across the SHAPE (Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines), STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and Health disciplines, the Digital Futures Institute helps create better digital futures. Situated where SHAPE, STEM and Health converge, the Institute advances research and public understanding of the contexts, consequences and possibilities of technology by reframing what are usually thought of as technical challenges - to be solved through technical fixes - as human and social challenges that require other ways of knowing, making and responding.

The Institute reconsiders the relationship between the individual and technology (understanding ‘technology’ in the broadest sense) in society, culture and everyday life and draws on a wide range of research expertise across King’s, forging radically interdisciplinary solutions to society’s big problems. The work of the Institute is enacted across four centres: the Centre for Attention Studies, the Centre for Digital Culture; the Centre for Data Futures and the Centre for Technology and the Body. 

Through our fellowships, projects and activities we explore questions such as:

• How can we ensure the practice of coding and technological build is rooted in understandings of diversity, discrimination, culture and ethics, rather than having these issues addressed as an afterthought?
• How can we ensure that new technologies are integrated into our lives in ways that promote equity and inclusion, working with, rather than against, fundamental human needs?
• How can we empower individuals and communities through greater awareness (and self-awareness) to shape the development and use of technologies in their lives?
• How might technologies be configured, rethought and repurposed to address simultaneous and overlapping global crises of public health, political trust, social inequalities and ecological breakdown?
• How can we learn from a history of the reception and integration of new technologies  to better confront the challenges of today?
• Overall, the Institute addresses a fundamental question that has become urgent in recent years: how do we ensure that human needs, and human good, are prioritised in the development and implementation of technology?

View the 2023-2024 Digital Futures Institute Annual Report.

Our research centres

Representing our work across the key dimensions of mind, body, culture, society and governance.

Centre for Attention Studies

Forging new responses to the foundational crisis of the digital age: distraction.

Centre for Digital Culture

Interdisciplinary research centre promoting research and public engagement with digital culture.

Centre for Technology & the Body

Mapping the interplay between technology, bodies, and health: from the scalpel to the touchscreen.

Centre for Data Futures

Supporting data empowerment and agency over how our data is used.

Leadership Team

Advisory Council

Steering Committee

Visiting Researchers