About the Lab

ETHOS Lab is a collective space for creative methods, critical computing and feminist inquiry at IT University of Copenhagen. We are dedicated to experimentation at the intersection of digital methods, ethnography, and speculative fabulation. We take seriously Donna Haraway’s notion that methods make worlds, which is why being creative and reflective with methods is essential to our work as investigators of technological worlds and how we hope to reshape them through research practice.

ETHOS Lab draws upon an interdisciplinary cross-pollination of the fields of STS, Anthropology, and Human Computer Interaction. Overall, we are committed to situated analytics. This means that we strive to understand how technologies are epistemologically and materially located within practices and lifeworlds. It is not only data-centric and computational methods, but also ethnographic methods, that are on the move, traveling, shifting, and imploding relations both within and beyond academic research. How do digital and computational methods migrate into humanistic and organizational understandings of social relations? By experimenting and engaging critically with technologies’ worldmaking capacities, we are interested in how they might extend our modes of inquiry.

As a feminist lab we are committed to creating an open space for discussion of our own working conditions and the maintenance of our selves within and beyond productivity at work. As well as hosting talks, events and workshops, we meet weekly to discuss what is on our desks and minds, convene quarterly for pitch and play meet-ups, and, through our open hours, are available throughout the academic year to spar about new projects and potential collaborations.

About the Space

ETHOS lab consists of a physical space –  room 3A30 – which is where we meet as a community. This is also where we host events, workshops and gatherings that to interrupt the dominant tropes of the “tech university”. Together, we try to cultivate other ways of being in relation to technology. We work with many different methods, from experimental writing to role play and game design to discover how we might come together in vulnerability and play. 

The space is also where students and researchers can experiment, facilitated by the infrastructures we build, host and maintain. Below is a list of what you will be able to find or get help with at ETHOS Lab!

Hardware

In the space you can find the following machines and hardware:

• 3D Printer – PRUSA MK3DS+
• Embroidery Machine – Brother Innovis NV870
• Breadboards, jump cables and arduinos for embodied computing

Software

As the main hub for research on digital methods at ITU, the lab hosts the following no-code tools which allow anyone with experience in humanities or social science to begin work using digital methods.

• 4CAT server + Zeeschuimer – collection/scraping, analysis, and visualization of data
• Pixplot – for clustering of images

ETHOS Library

Our lab is home to ITU’s only physical library. We have an unfolding selection of books and zines on topics from STS, privacy and surveillance, critical data studies to queer and trans technologies, feminist theory and much more. The library is run on a trust-based system and is free to browse and borrow from, for all. If you have any specific literature requests, you are always welcome to email us or to drop your suggestion in the green jar on top of the bookshelf.