critical infrastructure lab

upcoming activities

open reading group The Root & Router Society Reading Group

bi- weekly tuesday session 16:00 – 17:00 cest/cet* (once every two weeks)
facilitated by niels@criticalinfralab.net, fieke@criticalinfralab.net, maxigas@criticalinfralab.net

meet up here (just show up, no prior notification is needed): https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/6365963924
take notes here: https://pad.criticalinfralab.net/unz6CPM9SpieqIlkXf-Oq
sign up for the mailinglist here (don’t forget to click the link in the confirmation email):
https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/infrastructure-readinggroup
and a calendar event (add to your Google calendar or download an .ics file)

We are currently reading:
– The Low-Carbon Contradiction: Energy Transition, Geopolitics, and the Infrastructural State in Cuba by Gustav Cederlöf
– The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade by Deborah Cowen

April 28th – Low-Carbon Contradiction: Introduction – Deadly Life of Logistics: Introduction
May 12th – Low-Carbon Contradiction: Chapter 1 – Deadly Life of Logistics: Chapter 1
May 26th – Low-Carbon Contradiction: Chapter 2 – Deadly Life of Logistics: Chapter 2
June 9th – Low-Carbon Contradiction: Chapter 3 – Deadly Life of Logistics: Chapter 3
June 23rd – Low-Carbon Contradiction: Chapter 4 – Deadly Life of Logistics: Chapter 4
July 7th – Low-Carbon Contradiction: Chapter 5 – Deadly Life of Logistics: Chapter 5
July 21st – Low-Carbon Contradiction: Conclusion – Deadly Life of Logistics: Conclusion

If you want to see what we have read before, check the page of the previous infrastructure reading group, and the environment reading group. In this reading group, we have previously read:

– Extraction: The frontiers of green capitalism by Thea Riofrancos
– Cybernetic Circulation Complex: Big Tech and Planetary Crisis by Nick Dyer-Witheford & Alessandra Mularoni

* We use CEST between the last Sunday of March until the last Sunday of October, then we switch back to CET.

broadcast Global Reticulum Community Videocall No.4 May 2026

talk - presentation - panel How to boil a data center? May 2026

workshop Low-profile and low-energy autonomous networking with Reticulum at AMRO festival, Linz May 2026

talk - presentation - panel Interlinking sustainability and data management May 2026

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Data has become the new gold, and this truism is increasingly holding true. Organisations and society at large are confronted with an ever-growing flood of data — collected, stored, and hoarded as a matter of course. Yet behind the promise of the immaterial “cloud” lies a very material reality, think of data centres straining energy grids and impacting the surrounding communities.

This seminar tackles this interlinkage between data and sustainability and provides avenues for improvement – from a technical and organisational perspective.

Bringing together academic insight and frontline industry experience, this event will explore this most urgent topic. Joining us are:

Dirk Deridder, CTO of Smals, who will offer his account of navigating these pressures from within a major organisation. Smals is a Belgian ICT organisation delivering digital infrastructure and services to over 300 public institutions in the social security, healthcare, and e-government sectors. In doing so, it operates 4 data centres.
Fieke Jansen, University of Amsterdam: Dr. Fieke Jansen is co-principal researcher at the critical infrastructure lab, and co-lead of the Green Screen Coalition. Her work investigates how the infrastructure of our digital world, data centres, and AI influence the environment, raw material use, and climate.
Academic members of the SDM consortium: prof. An Braeken (VUB), prof. Jan Tobias Mühlberg (ULB), prof. Geoffrey Aerts (VUB). They will share their latest insights into how organizations can improve the sustainability of their data management practices.

Audience: The seminar welcomes industry professionals, academics working in related fields, and the wider public interested in the link between data management and sustainability.

Location: Becentral. Upon arrival, register at the main entrance. Event takes place at the FARI auditorium – 4th floor.

Date: 26/05

Time:

· 12:30-13:00 Lunch

· 13:00-15:10 Industry and academic speakers

· 15:10-16:00 Networking drink

This seminar is organised by the SDM (Sufficiency & Data Minimization) consortium, a collaboration between research groups at VUB and ULB. Funded by the Brussels-Capital Region – Innoviris.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/seminar-interlinking-sustainability-and-data-management-tickets-1985288060030

talk - presentation - panel From India Stack to Euro Stack: Infrastructuring State and Governance June 2026

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The UvA wide theme Responsible Digital Transformations hosts a panel discussion on Digital Public Infrastructures (DPIs): digital systems that enable secure interactions between people, businesses, and governments.

Date 2 June 2026
Time 17:00 -18:30
Location SPUI25

Digital Public Infrastructures or DPIs are the latest buzzword in global policy and governance circles, promoted by the United Nations, the World Bank, global philanthropies and governments across Global North and South. DPIs originated from the India Stack model to build meta, stackable digital infrastructures (for identity, payment and data) for seamless flows of public goods and services, where the state is responsible towards building public facing digital infrastructures and actual goods and service delivery are opened up to both public and private sectors. As per recent reports, there are more than 100 countries building DPI or DPI-like infrastructures. While their definition and meaning are fuzzy and contested, they offer new ways of thinking about infrastructures, governance and role of the state in times of crisis for state sovereignty and democratic institutions.

As infrastructures allow the state to translate its political power into everyday features of life and thereby represent its power to its citizens, it thus becomes important to unpack what power constellations DPIs are constituted of, how will they shift existing regulatory, bureaucratic and technical arrangements of governance, and what implication will they hold for state sovereignty and democratic institutions. To address some of these questions, we invite you to a panel discussion with:

Niels Ten Oever Assistant Professor in the European Studies department and co-principal investigator of the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam working on how invisible infrastructures shape the socio-technical ordering of information societies and how this influences the distribution of wealth, power, and opportunities

Carolina Maurity Frossard Assistant Professor in the Political & Economic Geographies, and co-director of the Centre for Urban Studies at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam examining how digital devices and infrastructures shape socio-spatial politics and inequalities at different scales

Nafis A. Hasan Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam studying impacts of digital technology on humans and organizations in the realm of public governance in South Asia

Bidisha Chaudhuri Assistant Professor of Government, Information Cultures and Digital Citizenship in the Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, investigating the political economy of digital infrastructures and governance in the Global South

https://rdt.uva.nl/content/events/2026/06/from-india-stack-to-euro-stack-infrastructuring-state-and-governance.html

past activities

publications

article From critique to hope: Infrawalking, defamiliarisation, transgressive infrastructuring and utopian engineering, by Fieke Jansen, Maxigas, & Niels ten Oever. Apr 2026

report Building a Shared Research Agenda on Submarine Cables by Fieke Jansen, Niels ten Oever, Dmitry Kuznetsov, Valentina Ochner, & Jane Ruffino. critical infrastructure lab document series CIL#014. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19368835. Apr 2026

book chapter More Compute for a Burning Planet? A Scarcity Approach to AI Infrastructures by Fieke Jansen & Niels ten Oever. Mar 2026

book AI Infrastructures and Sustainability: Expanding Perspectives on Automation, Communication and Media, edited by Anne Mollen, Fieke Jansen, Sigrid Kannengießer, Julia Velkova. Mar 2026

paper Infrastructural anxiety and digital sovereignty: The perceived loss of control in Dutch communication networks. First Monday, 31(3) by Fieke Jansen, Niels ten Oever, Sarah Vondran & Maxigas. Mar 2026

All publications

in the media

feature Data centers: quelle souveraineté numérique?, by ARTE. Apr 2026

news article Why the EU Commission’s plan for an AI data-centres boom is short-sighted by Fieke Jansen, Kristina Irion and Alex Lutz. Mar 2026

news article Datacentertumult: ‘Amsterdam crasht, Microsoft casht’ by Binnenlands Bestuur (Dutch). Mar 2026

feature Van geopolitiek tot geobacter: anders denken over digitale infrastructuur by Amsterdam Humanities Hub (Dutch). Mar 2026

news article Van dit soort ijzeren reuzen komen er nog meer, dwars door dorpen en over akkers by Loek Buter (Dutch). Jan 2026

More

experiments and interventions

EU digital legislation timeline February 2026

data center walks and infrastructure walks February 2025

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Join us for amateur exploration into the visibility of wireless equipment and services dotted around the city! We collectively map, observe and measure the techno-diversity of digital infrastructure in urban spaces. Data and infrastructure walks are a creative method and a social practice, which can be used to reflect on data power through critical infrastructure studies. It serves a variety of purposes, from public engagement, education, and artistic research to empirical studies.

Data center walks

We started data center walks with a simple question about how to make the invisible visible. People tend to forget about the infrastructure that lies beneath the data. For instance, the cloud remains a concept reduced to a depiction of a cloud, stripping data from its materiality. We usually do not see data centers, nor do we think about them in a material sense. By taking groups into data centers with us, we explore the resources, politics, and human labor that sustains them. To do so, we walk around and inside the data centers, observing physical traces as well as user-generated information online.

Infrastructure walks

We hold a series of “infrastructure walks” in Amsterdam and Berlin, exploring the visibility of digital infrastructures deployed in public spaces. The experience allows us to uncover data flows and to study datafication in urban areas. By engaging with the infrastructures around us, we seek to expose reconfigurations of power relations in the city through emerging technologies and protocols. Infrastructure walks address the question of what media technologies may mean “after all”, that is in the context of the life world, lived experiences and action possibilities of end users as embodied citizens. Insights can countermap the spatial control exercised through the electromagnetic spectrum in urban spaces. Often, us and the groups find that infrastructures should be (1) noticeable, (2) observable, (3) contestable or programmable to their users.

Upcoming walks and related events: Data Walk Workshop: Sensing Digital Materiality in Urban Public Spaces

Walking the infrastructure walk and dancing the frequency dance — You only see it when you get it

mud batteries and regenerative infrastructures February 2025

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Living Infrastructures and Organic Data Centers: Toward Ecological and Post-Extractive Computing

The environmental costs of computation have become impossible to ignore. Data centers, AI models, and communication infrastructures demand vast amounts of energy and minerals, intensifying extractive relations with both human and nonhuman worlds. In response, sustainability discourses in the technology sector promise greener energy, circular economies, and digital efficiency. Yet these solutions remain anchored in the same paradigm of accumulation that drives the ecological crisis in the first place.

In our lab, we take a different approach. We explore how computing might be reimagined from the ground up—literally—by engaging with living materials such as soil, microbes, and kombucha SCOBYs. These experiments aim not to optimize computation, but to decenter it, to ask what infrastructures might emerge when we take ecological entanglement rather than extraction as a design principle. On this page you will find impressions of our experiments.

Biological Power: Mud and Microbial Batteries

Together with artist Sunjoo Lee, we created an electrical gardan on the docks of the UvA. A series of mud batteries generate electricity through microbial fuel cells. These cells capture electrons produced by anaerobic bacteria in wet soil as they metabolize organic matter. The voltage is minimal—often between 0.3 and 0.7 volts per cell—but continuous, depending on the vitality of the microbial community. The continuous fluctuations in energy intensity sparked our curiosity — beyond the idea of mud as a power source — toward a space where voltage itself becomes an organic expression of computation. The soil thus becomes both the site and the medium of computation: energy is produced only as long as the ecosystem remains alive.

This project extends earlier artistic and scientific explorations of microbial electricity, but reframes them within the question of ecological infrastructures. Rather than treating biology as an alternative energy source to power existing systems, we ask how it could inspire new relations of maintenance, temporality, and dependency in digital systems.

Organic Substrates: Kombucha and Clay

We are also exploring kombucha SCOBYs—symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast—as living materials for circuit design. The cellulose-rich surfaces of dried SCOBYs are conductive when infused with certain electrolytes and can host sewn or printed traces. Alongside this, we draw inspiration from clay-based printed circuit boards, which uses local soil as both substrate and metaphor: the ground becomes circuitry. These material practices invite us to rethink electronics as earthbound and circular, materials that will eventually returning to the soil.

Sensing, Powering, and Communicating

To connect these experiments, we use a LabJack U3 interface to continuously measure voltage and current across the microbial and SCOBY cells. Our goal is to power a small web server directly through this living power source—a website whose uptime literally depends on the health of its microbial community. The fluctuating readings are logged and visualized in real time, making the metabolism of the mud and SCOBY visible as a communicative process.

Beyond measurement we see soil as the medium of computation. A first step is to enable distributed communication through the Reticulum Network Stack between the microbial and SCOBY cells. This stack enables resilient, peer-to-peer data exchange without reliance on central servers or the global internet. In a next phase, we plan to integrate the sBitx v3 transceiver to transmit microbial compute over shortwave radio. The Hermes.radio protocol, allows us to link biological power, local measurement, and planetary communication through low-power open infrastructures.

Computing Otherwise

These prototypes are small in scale but large in implication. They suggest that computing need not depend on extraction, nor sustainability on efficiency. Instead, we experiment with ecological computation as a mode of care, reciprocity, and coexistence—where systems live and die with the materials that sustain them.

By experimenting with mud, microbes, SCOBYs, and clay, we seek to develop new relations to computing and to decenter dominant theories of technological progress. This work aligns with broader debates in science and technology studies on digital sovereignty, infrastructural power, and ecological media, asking how infrastructures might evolve beyond capital’s logics of expansion toward restorative and regenerative practices.

In short, our aim is to imagine what computing could become if it were not only in the world, but also of it.

phase shift: the antennas and us February 2025

More

people and governance

people

niels ten oever

niels@criticalinfralab.net – co-principal investigator – geopolitics lead

niels is an assistant professor of AI and European democracies and co-principal investigator with the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam. He is a visiting professor with the Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Niels teaches courses in politics and technology, has implemented technology projects on five continents, and has participated in many governance and standard-setting processes, such as in the IETF, ICANN, ITU, ICANN, and 3GPP. His research focuses on how norms, values, and ideologies get inscribed, resisted, and subverted in communication infrastructures through their transnational governance. In his work, he tries to understand how invisible infrastructures provide a socio-technical ordering to information societies and how this influences the distribution of wealth, power, and possibilities.

maxigas

peter ‘maxigas’ dunajcsik – maxigas@criticalinfralab.net – co-principal investigator – standards lead

maxigas is assistant professor at the media department at utrecht university. he interested in hacker culture, cybernetic ideologies, infrastructural imaginaries, and the materiality of the digital. he uses media ethnography and digital methods to answer philosophical questions about contemporary social conflicts. with a thoroughly interdisciplinary background in the social sciences and humanities, a decade long industry experience in it, and a history of media activist practice, he brings a theoretically sophisticated, technologically grounded, politically savvy perspective to debates on media and culture. his papers have been published in leading journals in science and technology studies as well as media studies, from the social studies in science, through the journal of peer production, to most recently in the internet policy review.

fieke jansen

fieke jansen – fieke@criticalinfralab.net – co-principal investigator – environment lead

fieke is a postdoc researcher at the media studies department and a co-principal investigator with the critical infrastructure lab at the university of amsterdam. She is part of the 'Exploring sustainability and environmental resilience: Sustainable AI Futures' research project, led by Professor Samantha Walton, Bath Spa University. Fieke is a co-lead of the green screen coalition and a member of the advisory group for the Internet Infrastructure Climate Resilience Coalition: Action Research in Aotearoa New Zealand project. Fieke did her phd at the data justice lab of cardiff university, where she looked into the social justice issues of datafied policing in Europe. fieke is a former mozilla and green web foundation fellow where she explored ways to frame the climate crisis as a core digital rights issue.

fieke's research interest is to understand how the material impact of expanding infrastructures is shaping the management, distribution, and depletion of natural resources.

dmitry kuznetsov

dmitry – dmitry@criticalinfralab.net – postdoc researcher

dmitry is a researcher at the critical infrastructure lab. previously he was a PhD student and a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Journalism and Communication in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. dmitry’s research covers a variety of subjects, ranging from governance of internet infrastructure to formation/change of communities on digital platforms, united by an interest in the role of discourse vis-a-vis technology and society. beyond academia, dmitry has engaged with the internet governance sphere in the Asia-Pacific region, contributing to DotAsia’s Netmission initiative and participating in the 2023 APAC DNS Forum and the 2024 APRIGF.

eric zhang

eric – eric@criticalinfralab.net – PhD Candidate

eric zhang is a PhD Candidate at the critical infrastructure lab, where he studies how states' political ideologies in the EU, China and Russia shape digital technologies. besides, he is also a research fellow at the Leiden Asia Centre on international security in cyberspace and China-Russia relations. eric has a background in political science and international relations, and is passionate in applying computational methods such as Natural Language Processing in his research.

Felipe Silva Figueiredo

felipe – felipe@criticalinfralab.net – visiting researcher

felipe is a visiting researcher at the critical infrastructure lab. he is a phd student at the it university of copenhagen, in denmark. he has background in anthropology and science and technology studies. felipe's current phd research focuses on the political ecology of data centers and energy infrastructures in iceland, and how electricity shapes the sustainability and the limits of computation. his general interests lie in the intersection between infrastructure development and environmental crisis, and ways of resisting capitalism.

gargi sharma

gargi – gargi@criticalinfralab.net – programme coordinator

gargi is programme coordinator at the critical infrastructure lab. she is also communications & development manager at the clima fund and previously was a researcher and policy officer at the global data justice project at tilburg university.

nora svensson

nora – nora@criticalinfralab.net – research assistant

nora is a research assistant at the critical infrastructure lab where she primarily works on the geopolitics of submarine cables. she is also the director of the ngo push sverige and has previously done research on regenerative infrastructure and quantitative methods for measuring public attention to sustainability in europe.

fellows

anders aarvik

fellow 2025-2026 – anders@criticalinfralab.net – environment

anders investigates alternative internet infrastructures and system building through computational-aesthetic resistance. His research is informed by user-involved participation in the field of critical software and critical technical practice that overlap with artistic experimentation.

as a critical infrastructure lab fellow, he will focus on the print automation pipeline used to generate reports in the lab, seen through the lens of both a systems administrator, an artist, and a researcher.

Agustin Ferrari Braun

fellow 2025-2026 – agustin@criticalinfralab.net

agustin ferrari braun is a phd researcher at the university of amsterdam, studying the digital infrastructures of european media companies. he is interested in the political economy of media, media theory, and infrastructural imaginaries.

as a research fellow, he will be exploring the conceptualisations of the State present in contemporary theories of digital infrastructures, and whether they conform to traditional models of power and technology.

Olia Kanevskaia

fellow 2025-2026 – olia@criticalinfralab.net

olia is assistant professor of eu public economic law and technology at utrecht university. she investigates alternative forms of regulation, in particular technology standards, their legitimacy and interplay with international trade law and european administrative law.

Nigel Sequeira

fellow 2025-2026 – nigel@criticalinfralab.net

Nigel is interested in non-hegemonic interpretations of contemporary financial infrastructure. Among other things, during the fellowship he will investigate international capital markets as artefacts of unequal and combined development. His academic background is in mathematics and he has worked as a web developer, ghostwriter, and policy analyst. At present he works as an EU Trade Specialist at Terex Corporation.

becoming a fellow

are you interested in becoming a fellow? for us a fellow is someone who is connected to the infrastructure lab and adds to the body of knowledge and activities of the lab. the relationship should be mutually beneficial and contribute to creating new infrastructural imaginaries. fellows are selected for an academic year with the possibility to add another year. what we request of you is that you join our reading groups, organize an activity, and/or (co-)author a paper with us. what can we offer: an affiliation, participation in the (intellectual life of the) lab and the possibility to present on lab days, and have a space and platform to co-organize something. if needed, we can also explore if we can be fiscal sponsor for your projects. we provide desk space if needed. interested? contact one of the co-pis!

board

inspiration

former fellows, staff, and board members

Szilvia Mondel

project manager

Szilvia Mondel was the first project manager of the critical infrastructure lab. she has extensive experience with managing educational and institutional projects at the university of amsterdam. her organizational, administrative, and logistical skills were indispensable to running the critical infrastructure lab. she also loves windsurfing and painting.

ellen strickland

fellow 2023-2024 – geopolitics

ellen is an internet policy practitioner and researcher who has been studying and engaging in the shaping of internet governance and infrastructure since the early 2000s, during the WSIS process. She has engaged from across sectors, including as a government official, technical community leader, civil society advocate, and satellite investment company founder.

as a fellow she was reflecting on approaches to research and praxis, building on her previous research grounded in a critical political economy perspective and exploring discursive and sociological practices of internet policymaking.

she has a keen interest in reform of multilateral and multistakeholder Internet governance, as well as Internet infrastructure development to help people respond to and reduce the impacts of climate crisis.

vasilis ververis

fellow 2023-2024 – standards

vasilis is a researcher studying the technical implications of internet censorship in the eu and worldwide.

during their fellowship at the critical infrastructure lab, vasilis worked on a system that can track, categorize, and enumerate incidents of internet censorship, and network disruptions due to human or natural disasters that affect websites and Internet services.

jenna ruddock

fellow 2023-2024 – environment

jenna is a researcher and advocate interested in the intersections of law, technology, media and environmental justice.

as a critical infrastructure lab fellow, she continued her research on data centers, water use, and community resistance/governance. this work aimed to situate data center construction, operations, and expansion within a broader history of industrial infrastructure politics.

jef ausloos

fellow 2024 – geopolitics

jef ausloos is an assistant professor at the institute for information law at the university of Amsterdam, and a research fellow at the centre for IT & IP law at the university of Leuven. His work is driven by a critical understanding of the political economy of digital infrastructures and a desire for social change. Jef has worked in/with NGOs and people across disciplines and geographies. Currently, his work mainly centres around data rights and transparency of digital infrastructures.

senka hadzic

Senka is a researcher interested in affordable last mile connectivity solutions for remote areas and disadvantaged populations. As an Information Control Fellow supported by the Open Technology Fund, Senka worked with the critical infrastructure lab team on the digital security aspects and resilience of last mile solutions, such as community networks.

nadia gorchakova

nadia was a program manager at the critical infrastructure lab and has a background at the intersection of technology and climate justice. in a previous role, nadia worked for a global climate advocacy 350.org where she and her team managed the digital infrastructure of the organization.

sarah vorndran

sarah was a research assistant at the critical infrastructure lab with an interdisciplinary background in area- and media studies. her soft spot for design and its socio-technical dimensions manifests in creative explorations of urban infrastructures and digital interfaces. in a previous role, sarah assisted research on the modelling of uncertainty in climate communication, funded by the chinese university of hong kong. formerly, she was also affiliated with the educational radio às margens da cidade at the universidade federal de são carlos, where she participated as researcher on urban inequalities in brazil.

valentina ochner

Valentina was an intern at the critical infrastructure lab under the supervision of Fieke. She is a student of Environmental Humanities at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and has a background in media and cultural studies. She is interested in phenomena at the intersection between digital infrastructures and the climate crisis. During her internship she researched the role of Big Tech companies in the renegotiations of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol.

corinne cath

fellow 2023-2024 – environment

corinne is an anthropologist studying internet infrastructure politics. she brings ethnographic praxis to the study of computing cultures, cloud politics, and internet governance.

as an inaugural critical infrastructure lab fellow, she will be investigating the rough cultures that define internet governance communities and how cloud computing is changing power dynamics in the internet industry. she also has a keen interest in researching the intersection between space governance and internet technologies, including satellites and cosmic content delivery networks.

andreas baur

fellow 2023-2024 – geopolitics

Andreas Baur is a research associate at the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), University of Tübingen, Germany. There, he has been working on several research projects on IT infrastructures and their governance, technology ethics, security, and privacy. He is an external PhD candidate working on ‘The Politics of the Cloud’ at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam.

Andreas’ research focuses on the intersection between information and security technologies and society, especially with regards to questions of power, autonomy, and dependency.

jen liu

fellow 2024-2025 – environment

Jen Liu is a researcher and designer studying the ecological, social, and political implications of computing technologies and infrastructures. She is currently a PhD candidate in Information Science at Cornell University where she is studying the impact of climate change on networked infrastructures in coastal landscapes.

Thymen Gomperts

fellow 2024-2025 – standards

Thymen Gomperts is a carpenter and builder situated in the historic heart of Amsterdam. The building industry has always been deeply entangled with the development and practical application of infrastructure and standards.

Being both practically involved and highly interested in the subject, he helps give the lab insights into the common problems associated with organizing and applying infrastructure and standards in the real world and its changes throughout history.

Zuza Warso

fellow 2024-2025 – geopolitics

Zuza's research focuses on exploring how EU policies affect digital infrastructures and how they could be steered to support a model of digital public space that is non-extractive, allows people to enjoy their rights, and protects the commons. Zuza is Research Director at Open Future. She has a background in human rights and European law.

Nai Lee Kalema

fellow 2024-2025 – geopolitics

Nai Lee Kalema is a PhD candidate in Innovation and Public Policy at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (UCL IIPP) at UCL (University College London). Her research examines the global political economy of digital transformation, specifically how global governance and policies influence public-sector digital transformation in the Global South. Specifically, Nai’s empirical cases look at digital public infrastructure and digital-era government projects linked to digital identity in Kenya and Uganda.