Between July 2019 and June 2022, I was a Marie Curie Early Stage Research fellow and PhD Candidate at OpenDoTT. The project was at first affiliated with the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (University of Dundee), and from June 2020 on at the School of Arts, Design and Social Sciences of Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne.
The research topic I was assigned to in the project was "smart cities", described as follows in the call for applications:
Technology is fundamentally changing how cities work, but these smart cities are most often determined in a top-down fashion, with little transparency or accountability in how data influences the workings of the city. Can we create cities that are not just smarter, but kinder, fairer and more citizen-centred?
During the years of doctoral research, the focus I adopted was waste prevention through community-based practices of reuse. The final title of my investigation is "Generous cities – weaving commons-oriented systems for the reuse of excess materials in urban contexts". My thesis was successfully defended in September 2023. An overview of the investigation was published in the research blog (also available as a PDF from the Internet Archive).
More information about my investigation can be found in the following sections of this wiki:
- Research Studies.
- Design Concepts.
- Prototypes.
- Thesis.
- Public Engagement and Outreach.
- Datasets.
- Research Outputs.
- Project Reports.
- Public Workbooks.
See also the research blog I maintained during the project, and my (still growing) links collection.
¶ OpenDoTT
OpenDoTT (Open Design of Trusted Things) was "a PhD programme from Northumbria University and Mozilla to explore how to build a more open, secure, and trustworthy Internet of Things". The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 813508. More info (CORDIS).
The original project description was the following:
The challenges of the Internet of Things (IoT) require interdisciplinary thinking. OpenDoTT will train five Early Stage Researchers with backgrounds in design, technology, arts and activism to create and advocate for connected products that are more open, secure, and trustworthy.