Co-Designing Justice in Digital Futures – Reflections from Two Decades of Social Justice Research

This seminar will focus on Dr Katherine Easton's recent project, DigiWare, which investigated young people’s perspectives on justice in technology design. Through UKRI eNurture and HEIF-funded co-production workshops, 48 students (Years 7–9) from three secondary schools in Northwest England explored their understanding of IoT and its impact on their lives. Using a citizen-science approach, students engaged in interactive activities, storytelling, and visual design to construct utopian and dystopian digital futures.

Findings reveal entanglements of justice in technology use. Students valued personalisation, efficiency, and security, but raised concerns about data privacy, consent, and surveillance, questioning, “Where is my data going?” They perceived constant monitoring as a violation of trust, wanting greater agency over their digital lives. They also highlighted the need to learn from mistakes they make, as opposed to being restricted to the point where they have no autonomy to make them. These insights highlight the urgent need for participatory approaches in technology design to ensure that young people’s voices shape fair, ethical, and empowering digital futures.

This research underscores the importance of co-design in tackling digital justice, ensuring that future technologies are developed with, rather than for, those most affected by them.

About Dr Katherine Easton

Over the past 20 years, Katherine's research has been deeply rooted in social justice, co-production, and amplifying lived experiences across health, social care, community projects, and education. As a nationally and internationally recognised social psychologist and lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield, her scholarship examines the intersections of mental and physical health inequalities with social inequalities.

Her work critically explores the role of technology—including smartphones, AI, Internet of Things, and speech and language processing—in shaping mental health, well-being, and educational experiences. While these technologies offer potential benefits, they also pose significant risks, such as widening inequalities, dehumanising care, and intensifying surveillance. Her approach foregrounds the expertise of lived experience, employing co-production, qualitative methodologies, and realistic evaluation to develop, implement, and evaluate impactful research.