The Design Research Lab is a laboratory for experimental design and research reflecting on the digital society. Through playful interventions, critical making and collaborative reasoning we investigate possible futures. As a platform and network, we are deeply involved with the requirements and policies needed for an inclusive and sustainable development of the digital society from a design perspective.
We are an interdisciplinary team of designers, researchers, tech-enthusiasts and critical thinkers from Berlin University of the Arts, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, as well as Einsteincenter Digital Future (ECDF).
Paola Pierri is a researcher working in the field of Design Anthropology, with an interest in forms of activism and participatory democracy. She is completing her Doctoral programme at the University of the Arts London (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Centre), with a thesis that looks at the relationship between design and political creativity. She is currently a Lecturer at UAL and she has previously collaborated with the University of Liverpool on a research project exploring the model of Citizens Assemblies as one of the potential ways to increase citizens’ engagement around the future of the EU.
Paola has a background in Political Theory and a MA in Development. She is a Research Fellow at the Weizenbaum Institut, collaborating with the Research Group N8 on Inequality and Digital Sovereignty. Her research interests are around the role of design approaches in shaping publics and in encouraging political participation. She is particularly interested in the impact of the digital ecosystem on civic and political discourses.