Get involved

The Lab is always interested in weaving collaborations with both individuals and organizations aligned with our values and commitments to critical and feminist study of science, technology and society.

Collaboration

Our connections reach beyond ITU and beyond academia. We are collaborating with other scholars and students, as well as organizations, civil society actors and artists on matters of technology in various creative ways.

The Lab offers a diverse range of expertise and wilful bewilderment. We focus on creative ways of asking difficult questions and embracing complexity through digital methodologies, network analysis, data visualization, ethnographic fieldwork, participatory observation, design, and storytelling.

If you have an idea for a potential collaborative engagement or would like us to contribute to an event, we ask that you please read through the following collaboration formats. Feel free to suggest something that goes beyond what we have described here, however, in order for us to have the most meaningful conversation around collaboration, we ask that you be as specific as possible.


Collaboration formats

The following suggestions are based on previous collaborations, but is not an exhaustive list—

  • Informal talk in the lab — This could include setting up some time for meetings with various colleagues from the lab. 
  • A talk in our Technologies in Practice research group weekly salon — This is a smaller seminar size room audience, where we discuss ongoing topics of interest, hear presentations from visitors about projects, articles, works-in-progress, etc.
  • A workshop in ETHOS — This could be ETHOS-only, but we usually invite relevant colleagues from outside the lab for things like this. This could also include our Junior Researchers. A workshop could take the form of something that engages with your methods, and/or invites us into some of the methodological or transdisciplinary questions you are working through. 
  • A public talk/lecture — In a lecture hall, open to all ITU staff and students. For this we need to plan a bit more so we can ensure timely promotion and booking of a lecture hall. 
  • A public workshop — Open to all ITU staff and students.

ETHOS theme 2024

Each year ETHOS Lab chooses a thematic focus. In 2024 that theme is Urgent Contradictions.

Our theme for 2024 aims to open up space for reflection on the incongruity we experience between the familiar zones of everyday academic life and the scale of unfolding global events. In struggling to reconcile the day-to-day of teaching, institutional concerns, and research with the stakes of global crises, we inhabit contradictions that feel alternatingly exhausting and vitally important to sustain. Contradiction is thus an embodied sense of wanting to hold space – for hopes, for dreams, for collective action – while struggling with the question of what to give our time and energies to, what we value, or can dare to hope for.  To generate this year’s theme we came together and wrote down what feels important (both worrying and exciting) to each of us right now and how that connects to our mutual need for the local environment where we work together. We shared various critical reflections and idealistic aspirations, but also questions and uncertainties we have about this current moment that seems crowded with competing urgencies. As a way to make space for these uncertainties, we decided to filter out the things we know we clearly want to move away from and abandon, as well as those that we know we want to move towards, i.e. the ideals that still ring clear to us and what we readily oppose. What this left remaining was the messy-in-between: the both-ands, neither-nors, the land of double-binds and double standards, where the illogical sometimes seems to make sense. These became our Urgent Contradictions – contradictions we feel are worth following, crawling, nagging, devouring, de-bugging, or trolling in 2024 as we dream of better times ahead.

If you see any links with your work and this theme, we could also work together to organise something to go along with the theme.  

For collaboration proposals or inquiries, please contact: ethos@itu.dk

 

Opening hours

The Lab has regular opening hours throughout the semester on Thursdays from 11:00-14:00, allowing for a lunch break around noon.

The opening hours are co-working time for the Lab staff, as well as an opportunity for impromptu meetings and informal encounters for the community of faculty and students. This is an opening for bouncing off ideas, getting feedback, and work in the Lab.

Everyone is welcome, just pop by!

Feel free to get in touch with us and set up a meeting: ethos@itu.dk

The space

ETHOS Lab has its home at the IT University of Copenhagen, room 3A30. Although not being a large space, it is yet a space where you can spread your arms, put your legs up, and hopefully feel comfortable.

The Lab hosts the only library at ITU consisting of books carefully selected by our Lab members. The books are yours to read in the Lab but also to take home and return later. It is run by an analogue trust system, where you simply note down a promise of when you intend to return it.

The Lab is also a home to artefacts. Some of our items may be used for projects. Contacts us is you are interested in using the following;

  • Devices: PRUSA 3D Printer, Embroidery Machine, Solar Server
  • Software: 4CAT, TCAT, Youtube subtitle/transcript downloader

It is a space where you may find peers amongst staff and students who also want to get muddy and work with difficulties and complexities within technology knowledge production.