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The Design Research Lab is a network of people, organisations, and non-human agents engaged at the intersection of technologies, materials, and social practices. Our aim is to design socially and ecologically sustainable tools, spaces, and knowledge that support people’s participation in a digital society – based on common principles of inclusiveness and respect for the planet. This puts the basic democratic right to take part in the digital sphere into practice. We start our research from individual lifeworlds and the needs of minoritized groups, beyond consumer majorities.
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).
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Prof. Dr. Gesche Joost
Head of Design Research Lab
Gesche Joost works as a professor of design research at the Berlin University of the Arts, taking a transdisciplinary approach at the interface between the arts and sciences. She has been president of the Goethe-Institut e.V. since 2024 and is committed to the German government’s foreign cultural and educational policy.
She also serves on several supervisory boards, including the ZKM Board of Trustees, the Futurium Program Council, and the supervisory boards of ING DiBa and ottobock. From 2015 to 2018, she represented the German government as Internet Ambassador on issues relating to the Digital Agenda in the European Commission. In Berlin, she has been involved in establishing important institutions, including the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society and the Einstein Center Digital Future.
Gesche Joost arbeitet als Professorin für Designforschung an der Universität der Künste Berlin transdisziplinär an der Schnittstelle zwischen den Künsten und den Wissenschaften. Sie ist seit 2024 Präsidentin des Goethe-Instituts e.V. und setzt sich für die Auswärtige Kultur- und Bildungspolitik der Bundesregierung ein.
Darüber hinaus ist sie in mehreren Aufsichtsgremien tätig, u.a. im Kuratorium des ZKM, Programmrat des Futurium, Aufsichtsrätin der ING DiBa und von ottobock. 2015-2018 vertrat sie als Internetbotschafterin die Bundesregierung zu Fragen der Digitalen Agenda in der EU-Kommission. In Berlin hat sie beim Aufbau wichtiger Institutionen mitgewirkt, u.a. beim Weizenbaum Institut für die vernetzte Gesellschaft und beim Einsteincenter Digital Future.