Deakin Digital Life Lab
Socially engaged research on how digital infrastructures configure social life
How our research drives transformations in digital life
The Deakin Digital Life Lab (formerly the Critical Digital Infrastructure and Interfaces research group) scrutinises the underlying and unseen technologies and beliefs that drive digital experiences into our world. Our work investigates how these systems are designed, governed and impact society.
Underlying digital technologies we depend on increasingly mediate human interactions and our research interrogates the ethical, legal and societal implications. We address equitable design of data flows, sovereignty of personal information in markets and geopolitics, and the back-end ecological impact of emergent practices like generative AI. Why is it easier to believe that data is truth than data is oil?
Our research areas
Our nationally recognised experts explore the power dynamics implicit in technology development, aiming to empower users and promote equitable systems. Our work is focused through a twofold approach:
Norm-critical work
This work analyses the realities of ‘being digital’. It questions how our digital norms come to be, what puts them in motion and why.
Norm-forming work
This work generates new ways of seeing, thinking and knowing in digital life. It reconfigures what is normal in life amidst digital systems, making more equitable worlds.
About the centre
Hear from our lead researchers on how digital technologies change our lives, and how we can shape the future of digital tech.
Research partnerships in creative practice
Director Professor Toija Cinque on the international collaboration that transformed a Deakin Digital Life Lab exhibition into a global creative project.
Understand how technologies drive the digital world
When you study a PhD on digital infrastructures and interfaces at Deakin, you'll be supported by renowned researchers
Butterfly: Glo-cal Effects of Data, Energy, and Industry
Butterfly: Glo-cal Effects of Data, Energy, and Industry is an interactive new media art exhibition produced by Deakin University and the University of Vaasa. Held at the Wasa Innovation Center during the August 2025 Wasa Future Festival in Finland, it explores the environmental impact of digital technology through AI, VR and installations.
Our researchers
Our researchers deliver pioneering projects across the varied landscapes of digital infrastructures and interfaces and are led by:
Associate Professor Toija Cinque is Associate Professor in Communication (Digital Media). Her research focuses on problems and affordances of digital life, particularly on media developments of digitisation, datafication and platformisation (i.e. data-driven and algorithmically steered platforms) and their cultural, social and political implications.
Dr Luke Heemsbergen is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication and Creative Arts. Luke's research seeks to understand how what mediates society shapes our potential and how we might reshape the things that mediate society to unlock new potential.
Featured projects
We create socially impactful technology research that supports industry professionals striving to build more secure, ethical and user-centric digital technologies.
Melbourne Design Week: EcoDigital Futures
We curated art from nationally renowned artists into Melbourne Design Week as a way to translate research on our possible futures into provocative public artwork that explored how digital infrastructures impact the ecology we are part of.
WeChat, the Voice and Australia’s next election
Chinese-speaking Australians consume news on WeChat. How this space is governed and who influences political communication there is being considered from the perspective of Chinese Australians and in line with concerns of the Australian Electoral Commission.
Our partnerships
The Deakin Digital Life Lab brings together individuals and groups with similar research interests both inside and outside Deakin through annual workshops and symposia, bi-annual research events and monthly programs. Our approach ensures cross-pollination of diverse perspectives on digital infrastructures and interfaces, allowing us to build a collaborative and robust research culture.
- Victorian Department of Health
- City of Melbourne
- Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN)
- Meltwater
- Digital Futures.
Publications
For a full list of publications visit the profile pages of our researchers.
Contact us
Get in touch to learn more about how the Deakin Digital Life Lab and keep up to date with our research. Email our group convenors:
Email Toija Cinque
+61 3 9251 7470
Email Luke Heemsbergen
+61 3 9246 8786
