About

About the Center for Digital Welfare

The Center for Digital Welfare (CDW) is a research center at the IT University of Copenhagen consisting of researchers from all sections at the university. The CDW researchers collaborate within ITU as well as with external stakeholders around research topics and projects related to the digitalization of the welfare society. Find a full overview of CDW researchers here.

The CDW contributes excellent, interdisciplinary research within the field of public digitalization and, together with its members, investigates and articulates what it means to live, govern, and work in a digitalized welfare society. The CDW aims to influence the development of the digital welfare society according to sustainable and democratic principles by providing the newest research to academia, public debate, and decision-makers.

The CDW’s strategic direction is formed by a collective management team, consisting of co-leads Gitte Bang Stald, Irina Papazu, Louise Harder Fischer & Cancan Wang. Gitte is the current Center Representative (lead). Qiuyu Jiang is the Strategic Project Manager. Furthermore, the CDW consists of external members across public, private and civil sectors. Find a full overview of CDW’s external members here.

The CDW is organized around emerging thematic activities within digital welfare where CDW members deep-dive into current research trends and topics, led by CDW researchers, as well as center-wide events co-created with our external stakeholders to ensure that the center is aligned with societal and industry developments. Members of the CDW are invited to join all CDW thematic activities (of which there will be approx. 6 pr. semester) and center-wide events (approx. 1-2 pr. semester).

Some of the ‘emerging themes’ of 2025 are:

**CDW Emerging Theme #1: ‘Global comparisons and collaborations in digital welfare’**

Led by Associate Professor, Irina Papazu & Associate Professor, Cancan Wang

The digitalization of the Danish public sector is increasingly driven by international competition, as a number of countries are all striving to reach number one in international rankings. This has made ‘more’ digitalization a goal in itself, as Denmark is not willing to risk losing its international status as a digital frontrunner state.

In this theme, we turn our critical, curious and empirically interested sensibilities toward investigating the implications of this global race, as we discuss both the risks and the innovation potential that may follow from these ambitions.

We are, further, interested in the intense work of knowledge sharing that is taking place across borders and between countries which we normally consider very different, and in investigating the dynamics and consequences of this sharing of 'best practices' in public digitalization across borders.

In this way, we are also interested in the changes in the meanings and institutions of digital welfare, as they evolve with global competition and collaboration on public digitalization.

**CDW Emerging Theme #2: ‘Emergencies in the digital welfare state’’**

Led by Assistant Professor Sunniva Sandbukt

Emergency preparedness has received increasing attention in Denmark and other Nordic countries. In Denmark, the government issued new guidelines for how households should prepare for a crisis, established the Ministry of Societal Resilience and Contingency, and not least, the launch of a new digital communication system to complement the existing air siren system.

This theme at once explores the digital welfare state in the context of emergency, but also uses the framing of emergency to explore how encounters with the digital welfare state can result in personal experiences of urgent and unexpected crisis. It additionally asks how digitalisation of the state broadly, might benefit from examining the practices of digitalisation in the context of emergency services, where increased efficiency is about saving lives rather than costs.

This theme also critically engages with the practical material implications of digitalising emergency infrastructures to untangle how this digitalisation of, for instance, public warnings, can be understood not just as technological modernisation, but as an inherently political process. Therefore, the theme also unpacks the infrastructural, institutional, and relational outcomes of these processes, and how they contribute to social and cultural change in Denmark and other Nordic countries.

CDW Emerging Theme #3: 'Digital Well-Being: Human-First vs. Digital-First’

Led by Associate Professor Louise Harder Fischer

Perspectives from organizational settings: Under the sway of digital and generative technologies, the nature of work and jobs is changing rapidly. The overarching interest of this emergent theme is to understand how to promote well-being and quality of life as fundamental aspects in digitalization, as new technologies are transforming work, working lives and the society we live in.

In the thematic activities, we will aim to promote a deeper sociotechnical understanding of the interdependent relationship between humans and technology, to advance social needs by providing knowledge for developing and designing intelligent technologies that operate in harmony with human workers, and explore ways of mitigating potential risks, including inequalities, arising from working at the human-technology frontier.

We will convene in meetings and round-table sessions to conduct multi-disciplinary dialogue in collaboration with industry to sustain economic competitiveness, promote worker well-being and quality of life, and illuminate and problematize the emerging social and economic consequences of the technological innovations shaping the future of jobs and workplaces.

The research focus of this ‘emerging theme’ combines perspectives, methods, and knowledge from design, information systems, computer science, economics, and the social sciences in pursuit of a deeper understanding of how human needs can be met and values respected in the midst of a fundamental digital and societal transformation.

CDW Emerging Theme #4: Digitalization and/of Wellbeing’

Led by Postdoc Simy Kaur Gahoonia and Associate Professor Irina Papazu

In recent years, the alarm has sounded about a wellbeing crisis among Danish schoolchildren and youth. In Danish schools, digital apps for measuring, monitoring and intervening in students’ wellbeing are becoming commonplace. These apps digitally facilitate the continuous monitoring and discussion of wellbeing both in class and among professionals. The wellbeing of young people is also increasingly problematized in relation to digitalization more broadly.

This theme explores wellbeing as a digitally mediated phenomenon, and as a contested, relational, technical and affective phenomenon. We are for example interested in understanding the practices and implications of turning schoolchildren’s wellbeing into a daily, self-reported, datafied object for observation and intervention. While also opening up for critical exploration of the complex ways digital technologies intersect with and impact the wellbeing of youth in everyday life.

As such, the theme is a promising vector for impactful collaborations between academic researchers, the UC sector and professionals, who are working with digitalization of schools and youth, and the everyday lives that these transformations shape.

CDW Emerging Theme #5: 'Understanding Nordic Digital Order (UNDO)'

Led by Professor Vasilis Galis and Postdoc Björn Karlsson

UNDO uses a combination of research, software development and artistic inquiry to critically investigate the digitalization of policing and public order in three Nordic countries (Finland, Denmark, Sweden), and to mobilize for the protection of civil rights in the age of Big Data. Concretely, the project examines how data driven technologies affect not only crime solving/prevention but also social inequality and civil rights. This project aspires through artistic inquiry to produce a documentary and through community infrastructuring a counter surveillance application as part of a larger multidisciplinary process that incorporates academic research, art, and algorithm-making in the efforts of civil society to create and sustain spheres of critical public insight and protection of civil rights in connection to digital policing.

UNDO builds on a research collaboration on security governance, digitalization-in-practice, surveillance, Big Data, and accountability. We collectively research at the multidisciplinary intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS), Critical Criminology, Critical Big Data Studies, Security Studies, and Computer Science. As a project that investigates the societal impact of digital policing and using insights from grassroots communities as the projects’ starting point, UNDO additionally expects the fostering of a community-based research culture that will help civil society edge closer to opening the black box of the digitalization of policing, as a means of strengthening grassroots social institutions, by increasing these groups’ access to justice.

CDW Emerging Theme #6: 'Digital Nordic Borders: Unpacking the Contention Between Openness and Security in the Nordic Regions'

Led by Professor Vasilis Galis and Postdoc Vasilis Vlassis

The project investigates the tensions between Nordic openness and security that characterize surveillance practices at the Nordic borders, with a particular focus on new forms and tools of digital surveillance. The project studies both the legal, public and institutional discourse on new digital surveillance practices, enabled by advanced technologies, like automated border control gates, biometric scanning, facial recognition, automated plate number recognition, and the practices and organization of surveillance work – through both analogue and digital technologies – at the borders. With an interdisciplinary approach, we unpack how institutions, technological affordances and regulations shape and interplay in surveillance practices at different border sites.

The project involves a group of researchers from Sweden, Norway and Denmark with backgrounds in design studies, organization studies, information systems, anthropology, sociology, law and science and technology studies.

CDW Emerging Theme #7: 'Digitalisation of Health and Care'

Led by Associate Professor Signe Louise Yndigegn

The healthcare sector is increasingly digitalized due to increasing challenges in the area such as a growing population of children and older people, challenges of recruitment and requirements of austerity of the public sector. Technologies to support or replace healthcare and care work are often articulated as the solution to the problem. Therefore, we increasingly see the responsibility for nursing and care being distributed to technologies that can measure, monitor and perform care tasks.

This theme explores the digitalization of welfare in the health and care sector, focusing on how the introduction and implementation of technology transforms how care is provided. We are interested in understanding the practices and implications of distributing nursing and care to technological solutions, and how it emerges within nursing homes, home care and social care.

In this theme, we have a particular interest in ethical considerations and concerns that emerge in practice. We have an empirical and situated sensibility for everyday ethics and how it is central to critically understand the complexities of the digitalization of welfare in this area. The implementation of health- and welfare technology can be seen as an improvement of welfare, but it is also an inherently political process that includes cuts, austerity and efficiency, and at the same time opens new legal and ethical questions.

CDW Emerging Theme #8: 'Citizens under Development: Democratic Participation and Digital Citizenship in Transition'

Led by Associate Professor Gitte Bang Stald

Young people are young citizens, with citizen rights and duties. Denmark is a digital society by law and young citizens are trained users of digital solutions. Hence, it is obvious to think that digital society is the society of the young. But are the logics behind society's digital solutions the logics of young people? Is the motivation to manage one's digital civic life obvious to them? What do young people think about their own civic role, and their democratic rights, duties, and opportunities in digital, democratic society?

The objective of this theme is to investigate and disseminate research-based knowledge about the intersecting challenges of being young, informed citizens in digital society and developing fundamental democratic self-confidence. The investigation comprehends questions about civic and democratic literacy, informed citizenship (redefined), democratic self-confidence, and the meaning of trust. The theme relates to an ongoing study of the problem and draws on national and international research.

CDW Emerging Theme #9: 'Governance and involvement in Democratic Organizations'

Led by Associate Professors Hanne Westh Nicolajsen, Vasiliki Baka, Lene Nielsen and Sanna Marttila

Democratic values in organizational settings are under pressure internationally as well as within the Danish society. Denmark has a strong tradition of cooperatives that have historically amplified the voices of workers, producers (eg. farmers) and customers. This theme explores emerging trends in democratic organizing within cooperatives, aiming to identify ways to strengthen the voices of employees and citizens and looking into alternative forms of organizations.

We are interested in employee-owned and self-managed businesses and how they contribute and thrive to the contemporary organizational forms. We are looking into how governance and decision-making is organized, how participation and membership unfolds, and how collective ownership is realized in cooperatives. Specifically, we explore digitalization and the role of technology in cooperatives practices and processes.

We study the role of digital communication platforms to enhance cooperative values, governance, and democratic participation.

Currently we are interested in 1) democratic involvement of members in member owned organizations through means of digital communication platforms 2) new ways of seeing democracy which may engage younger generations and groups of members often not accommodated 3) governance in employee-owned businesses.

Our Advisory Board

PhD and partner Tobias Bornakke