The narratives we tell about technology shape who gets to participate in building it. Our research documents the lived experiences of people engaging with emerging technology, the ideas being left out of mainstream conversations, and the work being done to imagine something better.
Our goal is to produce research that is useful to communities, shaped by the people it concerns, and oriented toward action rather than observation alone.
Community-based research documenting harms and dreaming of more ideal futures.
Research Reports
A Practitioners Guide to the Dos and Do Nots of Public Scholarship: This Week in Robots (Meta Report)
What does it actually take to communicate research to a public audience? Rena Zhu, a PhD candidate in robotics at the Colorado School of Mines, spent eight months finding out. Across 30 short-form videos on robotics topics, she worked through the practical and intellectual challenges of public scholarship in real time.
This meta report draws on that experience to document what she learned: about earning audience attention, making technical content approachable without flattening it, and what sustained public outreach can offer a researcher's own thinking. It is written for researchers navigating these questions themselves, grounded in direct experience rather than general prescription.
All Tomorrows Institute is in the early stages of planning a convening (tentatively slated for spring 2026) focused on children, safety, and digital mental health in Chicago. The goal is to bring together researchers, industry practitioners, nonprofit and community-based organizations, City of Chicago officials, and Chicago Public Schools representatives to build shared understanding and identify pathways for coordinated action in this space.
As part of our scoping process, we are in the process of conducting a landscape analysis of the AI and digital mental health ecosystem in Chicago, which includes stakeholder interviews with practitioners, policymakers, and researchers working at the intersection of youth wellbeing and technology. This research is led by our Research Intern Gabrielle Lisk. The results of this landscaping will be released as a report in fall 2026.
This report will help us understand what issues feel most pressing and locally relevant, so we can narrow the summit's focus to where it can have the most meaningful impact.