new Digital x Climates network

February 04, 2026

Over the past few years I’ve been co-director of the Centre for Digital Culture, taking over from Paolo Gerbaudo when he moved from London to Madrid.

First I shared this role with Photini Vrikki. Then I became director when Photini took up a position at UCL. Now I’m co-director with Zeena Feldman, with whom I share a commitment to learning about feminist co-leadership.

Since joining this role we now have 65+ digital culture researchers from multiple departments, faculties and schools across the university. As well as having gatherings involving the whole centre, at previous meetups we’ve discussed having some smaller research groups around shared interests.

One area of interest has been digital methods for internet research - for which we have set up the KingsCAT instance of the open source 4CAT software and an associated group.

Another theme that emerged in meetings last year was the intersections between digital technologies, ecologies and climate change. To support work in this area a Digital x Climates network has just been set up, co-led by Anna Watkins Fisher, Sebastián Lehuedé and Güneş Tavmen.

I’m also a member of the network and look forward to seeing further activities in this area. As discussed in a panel last year, I’ve worked on several collaborative research projects related to this area, including:

More about the network can be found here, and copied below. The network is associated with and supported by the Centre for Digital Culture, the Centre for the Ecologies of Attention and Perception, the Digital Futures Institute, the Department of Digital Humanities and the Faculty of Arts & Humanities. There will be a launch moment later this month. 🎊

Digital x Climates is an interdisciplinary network dedicated to advancing research, dialogue, and public engagement on the entanglements of digital technologies with environmental, social, and political ecologies. We foster critical inquiry into the material infrastructures, labor relations, cultural imaginaries, and policy arrangements that sustain digital systems, from data centers and extractive supply chains to platforms, algorithms, and networked devices. Challenging persistent narratives of digital immateriality and limitless innovation, Digital x Climates foregrounds the environmental costs and uneven human consequences of contemporary digital technologies, situating them within broader planetary and ecological limits.

The “X” in Digital X Climates marks both a critical conjunction and tension, insisting that “digital” and “climate” be thought together as entangled domains while acknowledging their possible incompatibilities and the demand for non-toxic, even non-digital futures. It also names the open variable of scholarly inquiry into how digital systems and climatic conditions co-produce one another (e.g., crisis, embodiment, inequity, infrastructure).

Bringing together digital humanities scholars from a range of methods and backgrounds, the group asks how digital systems contribute to the climate crisis and global inequality, and how they might be reimagined otherwise. It examines the legal, regulatory, cultural, and design challenges involved in asserting limits on digital capitalism, while exploring how critical and digital humanities approaches can support practices of resistance, accountability, and intervention. Through collaborative research and exchange, Digital x Climates seeks to cultivate alternative techno-ecological futures grounded in sustainability, justice, and collective care.

Update 2026-02-18: updated name of group to reflect rename to Digital x Climates and added link to the launch announcement.

← Back to posts