Just Tech

Overview

The Just Tech program empowers a diverse and cross-sector network of “social researchers,” including scholars, civil society researchers, and arts and journalism practitioners, to imagine and create more equitable and representative technological futures. Just Tech foregrounds questions of power, justice, and public impact at a time when technological development, while not always assumed to be inherently positive, is often assumed to be an inevitable boon to society.

The Just Tech program has three goals: 1) to improve our base of knowledge by creating purposive and sustainable pathways for critical research; 2) to advance and connect the work of social researchers who offer necessary alternatives to the voices and institutions—including those within the tech industry—that already have outsized representation; and 3) to amplify the work of people subject to historical and ongoing discrimination, who are at the forefront of change and social innovation and best positioned to solve problems and reframe assumptions about how technology shapes power in society.

By creating a pipeline that fosters research and social engagement, the program works to enrich public discourse, inform policy, and imagine just futures where social and public interests drive technological change, rather than the inverse.