Academic research at Demos Helsinki

ARISE (Agile, human-centric, and Real-tIme enabled open SourcE technologies advancing industrial HRI in Europe) is a Horizon Europe-funded project that aims towards making industrial human-robot interaction (HRI) more accessible, cheaper, and easier to adopt. The particular focus of the project is on HRI in healthcare, intralogistics and manufacturing.

REPAIR examines algorithmic infrastructural vulnerabilities and develops ways to improve algorithmic systems through, for example, studying how cyber insurance responds to the need to manage datafied uncertainty. At the core of this is the belief that, despite their shortcomings, algorithmic systems can also work as a positive force that supports human productivity, sustainable uses of resources and more inclusive delivery of public service.

The EU Horizon-funded LIKE-A-PRO project aims to promote the transition to sustainable and healthy diets by shifting promising alternative proteins and products from niche to mainstream — making them more available, accessible, and acceptable to all population groups.

CommuniCity is a 3-year project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme, building citizen-centred tech solutions focused on urban and societal challenges. The project will address the needs of cities and marginalised communities in 100 pilot areas through co-creation and co-learning processes.

TANDEM is a transdisciplinary research project developing methods to engage potentially affected citizens and create just transition pathways to low-carbon futures in five case areas in Europe. In the project, citizens will discuss the impacts of current transition policies and create visions of fairer futures using arts-based methods.

The WELGO consortium tackles the challenge of how to safeguard welfare under exceptional conditions created by rapidly escalating health crises such as pandemics. Even the most welfare-enhancing policies and services will fail to deliver welfare and wellbeing if they are disrupted or discarded in crisis conditions.

The objective of the Accounting Technologies for Anti-Rival Coordination and Allocation (ATARCA) is to create new decentralised technology, “anti-rival tokens” and new policies to enable decentralised, market-style trading and ecosystems for anti-rival goods and to explore the opportunities of “anti-rival tokens” to build more sustainable data economy.

Launched in January 2020, TOKEN is an EU Horizon 2020-funded project whose ultimate goal is to develop an experimental ecosystem to enable the adoption of DLTs as a driver for the transformation of public services towards an open and collaborative government approach with trust, transparency and efficiency at the core.

BlueAdapt develops new ways to support sustainable blue growth in food production, energy and tourism. To reach the twin goals of sustainable growth and good ecological status of waters, BlueAdapt seeks societally significant innovations and development paths, as well as novel forms of governance and regulation.

The strategic research project BEMINE aims to enhance integrative capacities for urban planning in order to develop, not only new tools and better evidence-base, but also more usable, democratic, and effective concepts and practices.