UCL Knowledge Lab

Our centre

Director: Professor Kaśka Porayska-Pomsta

Deputy Director (Partnerships and Income): Professor Manolis Mavrikis

Deputy Director (Visibility and Outreach): Dr Chris Rhodes

The UCL Knowledge Lab is a research laboratory working to reduce social barriers to knowledge, bringing together experts with imagination and insight from across different disciplinary backgrounds to undertake cutting edge research on digital media and technologies.

Our research spans four themes:

• Technology, body and communication, led by Professor Lesley Gourlay.
• AI and education, led by Professor Kaska Porayska-Pomsta.
• Media arts and play, led by Professor John Potter.
• Media, culture, technology, led by Professor Diane Carr.

We centre multimodality and co-design as methodological approaches.

Our values

• Innovation – we value interdisciplinary collaboration and pride ourselves on our creativity in developing innovative and participatory methods in multimodal, design-based and practice-based research.
• Integrity – we strive for an honest and respectful approach in our interactions with colleagues, students and external collaborators and aim to conduct ethical research with positive and lasting impact on people’s lived experience.
• Inclusion – we value diversity and are strongly committed to developing ways of working with technology which contribute to equity and social justice.

Background

The UCL Knowledge Lab extends the legacy of the London Knowledge Lab.

The London Knowledge lab was led since 2004 by Professors Richard Noss and Alex Poulovassilis as a collaborative initiative between educators from IOE and computer scientists from Birkbeck, funded by the Science Research Investment Fund.

In 2016 the collaborative initiative ended and the UCL Knowledge Lab was established. Our common legacy includes over a decade of interdisciplinary research funded by ESRC, EPSRC, AHRC, EU, JISC among others; a variety of knowledge exchange and public engagement activities; and a distinctive postgraduate training programme.

20 Years of Knowledge Lab

In 2024 we celebrated #20YearsKnowledgeLab. The Lab, based at Emerald Street in High Holborn, London, and hosted by UCL IOE is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading research centres in human learning, media and technology. It was established by Professor Richard Noss and colleagues from Birkbeck in 2004 as the London Knowledge Lab. The Lab provided an interdisciplinary space for educators from the Institute of Education to collaborate with computer scientists from Birkbeck, initially funded by the UK Government Science Research Investment Fund. Lab Director Professor Allison Littlejohn set up number of 20 year anniversary events to celebrate the achievements, impact and forward vision of the Lab. The centrepiece was the Richard Noss Lecture delivered by Professor Diana Laurillard on 24 October 2024.