Research

STREET Lab is focused on understanding and supporting the sociotechnical practices of marginalized communities around the world, with an emphasis in resistance, informality, and social justice.

Some broad research projects that we currently work on:

Technology Use in Social Movements

How are social movements using technologies? How can we support them?

Researchers: Ashique Ali T, Paridhi Gupta, Cagdas Dedeoglu, Cansu Ekmekcioglu, Janna Akimova, Jaydon Brown, Marco Chan

Subprojects:

Turkey Bogazici Protests
Indian Farmer Protests
Belarusian Social Movement
Hong Kong Diaspora and Protests
The Afterlife of Black Lives Matter (BLM) Coalitions

News

Aarhus 2025 Workshop: 'Reimagining Social Media and Social Movements in Crisis' — Aug 2025
SSHRC Insight Development Grants (IDG) Grant: 'ICTs, Diasporic Social Movements, and Transnational Repression' — Jul 2025

Tech-mediated Labour Practices

How do technologies (and algorithmic management) shape labour experiences?

Researchers: Ashique Ali T, Siddhant Shinde, Adrian Petterson, Isabella Rodriguez, Olivia Doggett

Subprojects:

News

Paper: 'Prism of Labour: Unsettling Knowledge, Skill, and Technology in Work Infrastructures' accepted to CHI 2026 — Feb 2026
SDG@UofT Synthesis Grant Award: 'Precarity in the City: Environmental hazards and Gig Labour in Urban India' — Apr 2025

Accessibility-related Research

How can we build more inclusive systems and processes?

Researchers: Carolyn Ly, Trevor Cross, Ishani Pandey, Adrian Petterson, Sid Shinde

Subprojects:

News

Paper: 'Resilience to Disruption: Accessible Navigation for People with Visual Impairment' accepted to CHI 2026 — Feb 2026
Paper: 'Infrastructuring as Collective Resistance: How Disabled Students Negotiate Access Through Technology in Universities' accepted to CHI 2026 — Feb 2026

Designing For/With Care

Exploring how we can design for/with care and supporting existing care organizations

Researchers: Adrian Petterson

Subprojects:

Design Equity

How can we help designers shift systems of oppression?

Researchers: Adrian Petterson, Trevor Cross, Carolyn Ly

More Details

News

Paper: '“Studying Up” through Digital Ethnography: The Politics of Reactionary Caste Enclaves' accepted to CHI 2026 — Feb 2026
Paper: 'Tooling Justice: Articulating Equity Work Through Design Toolkits' accepted to CHI 2026 — Feb 2026

Posthumanism, Design, and HCI

How are notions of the Posthuman used in HCI and Design fields?

Researchers: Cagdas Dedeoglu, Kit Haehnal

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Sex Ed Creators' Strategies of Circumventing Censorship

What strategies do creators on the social media platform TikTok use to circumvent censorship when producing sex ed content?

Researchers: Emily Weckend

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Designing Research Tools

Designing research tools to help qualitative researchers

Researchers: Emily Su, Carmen Chau