Launched in Autumn 2025, with a team comprised of postdoctoral researcher Hanna Berg, PhD researcher Carolina Earle, and Uganda-based partners Dr. Herbert Muyinda and postdoctoral researcher Grace Oroma-Lanek, the four-year project will examine how “Digital Humanitarianism” is emerging as a field of knowledge, a community of practice and an arena of experimentation through the development of partnerships between humanitarian organisations, private corporations and scientific institutions.

The workshp brought together scholars working on humanitarianism and technology to discuss how digitization transforms humanitarian aid. Less concerned with normative evaluations of the limits and potentials of technical innovations, participants discussed their ethical and political implications and critical questions about the regime of living they foster.

On the first day of the workshop, presentations and wide-ranging exchange covered four overlapping themes: Accountability and Transparency; Extractivism and Colonialism; Care and Surveillance; and Humanitarian Goods and Public- Private Partnerships for Innovation.  The second day was an opportunity for the project team members to discuss their respective research designs with the advisory board.

Cross-pollinating and recurring topics in the workshop included regimes of knowledge, notably the quantification of needs and vulnerability in fragile contexts, the role of infrastructures in mediating communication between ‘beneficiaries’ and aid agencies, technological experimentations, data extractivism, surveillance apparatuses, practices of resistance and technological repurposing.