It is with the great pleasure that we would like to welcome you to a new laboratory at the ITU: ETHOS Lab. For several months now we have been working hard on hatching this new experimental space. We now feel that it is ready to see the light of day, and ready for others – you – to engage with it and together with us use and create it further.

Experiment!
ETHOS stands for Experimental Techno-Humanities and Organisational Services, which may sound outlandish, but really is not. ETHOS is first and foremost simply a space where we want to work together to experiment and push the boundaries of digital, anthropological and design methods and of how to generate value with IT. We focus on the intersection of the technological, material, human and organisational. From Big Data to participatory observation to the design of data visualization we aim to combine these approaches and work together with companies and other organisations to provide valuable services and interactions.

We do so through teaching in workshops and everyday interactions, through research projects and through out-reach and collaboration about services with external organisations. The lab will create synergies between these three areas, by activiating our  imaginations as we strive for novel questions and innovative solutions. Synergies arise in the differences between research, teaching and services in practice as well as in vision – and ETHOS Lab is ideally suited to explore this.

Activities
The lab is primed to host a number of activities to explore these themes. We will have weekly opening hours to support project and group work for students working with digital methods. Our lab staff is on hand to help you, whether you are new, intermediate or expert with the methods. We are also planning a series of lectures, workshops and seminars on digital methods, but also on other topics such as designing a CV where interdisciplinary skill sets are articulated.

In terms of research we are working on drafting research proposals, have a call for papers out and already have an active community of researchers affiliated. We are also part of the Danish partnership on digital methods CADM. We are working together with the IxD lab and actively wish to work  with other labs as well.

For organisational services we are working on building up relations, and while it is too early to announce any offically we do have some very exiciting prospects for partnerships. If you represent or know an organisation who might be a fit for ETHOS, please do not hesitate to contact us about it.

Volunteers and engagement
We would like to use this oppertunity to encourage you to get involved with the lab. We see ETHOS as a platform for researchers and students of all levels and programmes. In particular we are looking for volunteers to become a part of our staff – to get engaged in projects about developing tools, being a part of developing the lab and assisting in daily operations. Read more about getting involved here.

Newsletter
If you wish to stay updated on ETHOS Lab please sign up for our monthly newsletter. The newsletter will inform you about upcoming events, new methods and tools available, research and student work and our continuing reflections on building a lab and creating organisational value.

What’s in a lab?
We hope you think like us that ETHOS Lab sounds like an exciting new development at the ITU. For us the lab is an oppertunity not just to research, teach or work with organisations, but also to explore what a lab is and perhaps act as a bridge between the already existing labs. The ITU is a place filled with immense expertise, which we think could become powerfully more valuable by being knitted closer together. We see ETHOS Lab as one step in that direction, both as a new space for experimentation in itself and as one node connecting with many others in the research network. We hope you would like to join us in that project.

The ETHOS Lab Team,
Brit, Marisa, Michael, Sara, Kristian, Suzie, Claes and Alina