Research and consultancy

Research and activities

Find out more about current and past research from the UCL Knowledge Lab.

• Ongoing projects
• Completed research
• Resources

More about our researchers, publications, activities, groups and themes:

• UCL Research Portal

Consultancy services

We have substantial experience and expertise in carrying out consultancy and research projects for international, national, regional and local authorities and organisations including government departments, business and the IT sector, and voluntary groups.

Our services range from one-day training or staff development initiatives to longer-term research and evaluation work. Examples include:

• The Future Classroom Toolkit: Innovative Technologies for Engaging Classrooms (European Schoolnet)
• UK Scoping Report for the Further Education Online Academy (JISC).
• 2030 Vision for using learning technology for STEM (Royal Society)
• Piloting Media Assessment Framework (Scottish Qualifications Authority)
• The Home Access Programme Evaluation (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency)
• Automated Tutor Grading: 1 to 1 online tutoring to monitor tutor quality and learning outcomes (Third Space Learning)
• Evaluation of UK Online Paediatric care (Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health)

Research themes

Technology, Body and Communication 

Led by Professor Lesley Gourlay

This theme explores the relationship between humans and digital technologies stimulating new forms of communication and new ways of knowing. It builds on our longstanding work on meaning-making such as the theoretical and methodological development of the concept of multimodality, and work on literacy and numeracy in digitally-mediated environments. It extends these perspectives and approaches to explore new forms of meaning-making in the contemporary ‘postdigital’ world. The theme builds on our methodological innovation at the intersection of technology and the body, exploring shifting relations between technologies and humans through the study of phenomena such as digital touch, bio-tech hybrid systems and haptic design. The embodied lived experience of human-technology relations is brought to the fore using perspectives from social sciences, science and technology studies and the philosophy of technology. Work under this theme investigates phenomena such as generative AI and synthetic authorship, and the entanglements of the body, digital surveillance and smart campus technologies. It also includes work using perspectives from science and technology studies such as sociotechnical imaginaries, analysing education as part of a web of wider sociotechnical systems which involve complex embodied, affective, relational and sociotechnical assemblages of human and nonhuman agency. 

Artificial Intelligence and Education (AIED)

Led by Professor Kaska Porayska-Pomsta

For 20 years the Lab has been conducting leading-edge research, blending globally recognised expertise in both computing and the learning sciences. Our interdisciplinary research has been shaping AI’s role in complementing and enhancing human learning, interrogating how AI can best support human learning and development across diverse socio-economic and cultural contexts, and age groups, and engaging in critical study of the ethical and human rights issues arising in and because of AIED. Our work bridges AI engineering – including robotics, affective computing, natural language processing, and learning analytics, using both machine learning and symbolic computational methods – with deep insights from the cognitive, social, and educational sciences. Our research pushes the boundaries of knowledge and educational technology, from developing adaptive learning environments that meet the needs of diverse learners, to pioneering multimodal learning analytics that support educators’ real-time practices, and defining human-centred AI that meets human needs and protects human values and rights. Our work informs international policy and shapes responsible AI practices worldwide. We are driven by a mission to understand and leverage responsible AI for education, that empowers teachers and enhances learner agency, towards globally accessible, effective, and safe education for all.

Media Arts and Play

Led by Professor John Potter

‘Media, Arts and Play’ encompasses research and teaching in the agentive and productive use of digital media in the arts and humanities, drawing on arts practice, film, music, media literacy, media education, games and game authoring, and play, on and offscreen. The theme is associated with the ReMAP Centre, which is based at the UCL Knowledge Lab but which also has membership from other parts of Culture Communication & Media, and wider UCL. Its theoretical lenses are drawn from media and cultural studies, arts and humanities, identity, representation, new literacies, multimodality, sociomateriality, and emergent postdigital and posthuman thinking. Its methodological stance is mainly qualitative and encompasses participatory, practitioner and practice-based research techniques. Its work frequently connects digital media arts practice with issues of equity and social justice, coloniality, mental health, wellbeing, and curriculum (re)development. It overlaps and intersects with other themes at the lab, in particular with ‘Media, Culture, Technology’ and ‘Technology, Body and Communication’. Its distinctive focus brings digital media into alignment and dialogue with cultural theory and media arts practice, employing innovative methodologies and analytical techniques, seeking funding from UKRI, several research institutions and foundations, and internal grants connected to UCL knowledge exchange and grand challenges themes. 

Media, culture, technology

Led by Professor Diane Carr

‘Media, Culture and Technology’ encompasses research and teaching that engages with the cultural politics of media and digital technologies. It addresses questions of exclusion and precarity, agency and resistance. The theme incorporates research based in the arts and humanities, arts practice, and the social sciences. It shares ground with ‘Media, Arts and Play’ and is also closely associated with the ReMAP Centre. Research in this theme is affiliated with cultural studies and media studies. As such, it draws from and contributes towards a range of fields and frameworks including, for example, feminist epistemologies, queer studies, games and player research, critical race theory and disability studies, platform studies, decolonization, studies of social media and datafication, and critical AI studies. Our methodologies are reflexive, tending towards the collaborative, participatory, community-orientated, and practice based. This theme is also home to research that explores power, ethics, experience and marginality in academic practice. Research associated with this theme has been funded by major research councils and foundations, and by UCL.