Research

Research, Research

Get involved: Mapping community-centered AI tools for climate action in the Global Majority

Denisse Albornoz
20 April 2026

Across the Majority World, communities, grassroots organizations, and non-profit actors are building AI systems to address climate justice. However, many remain overlooked or underrepresented in global conversations about AI and climate.

As part of our AI for Climate Action initiative, which explores how AI technologies can be  re-imagined and re-directed by centering locally developed, and community-centered models in Majority World contexts, we will conduct research to explore AI adoption in the context of climate action.

Research

How we approached consent and security in our digital ID research

Paola Verhaert
1 April 2020

العربية | Español | Français At the outset of our research project on digital ID, we aimed to design consent and data management processes that uphold the dignity and rights of the communities in our study. As we’ve noted, it is often unclear whether communities purportedly being offered “informed consent” actually have the space to […]

Research

Opportunities for the organisational security community

Paola Mosso
Madeleine Maxwell
3 February 2020

In the context of increasing rates and sophistication of attacks from state and non-state actors, organisational security (orgsec) practitioners offer essential support for many civil society organisations and communities. However, these practitioners are often working independently, without the security and opportunities for learning and development that working for an organisation can provide. As such, practitioner […]

News, Research

Digital ID: What we’ve been up to and where we’re headed

Sara Baker
7 May 2019

Last September, we started working on a research project looking at the effects of digital identification on local communities. We’ve been in touch with many people, organisations and institutions who are thinking about digital identification systems in different ways, and we’ve developed some exciting research methods. We’re excited to share a bit of what we’ve […]

News, Research

Investigating Digital Tool Re-Use Among UK Organisations

Sacha Robehmed
27 March 2019

We’re excited to share that over the next year, we’ll be carrying out a new research initiative looking at how UK charities* re-use existing digital tools for service delivery. We’ll be working as part of a wider project, Digital Sparks, to support UK charities with digital service delivery. Our partners include: CAST, Dot Everyone, Cassie […]

Research

Technology and responsible data for migrant workers

Zara Rahman
12 November 2018

We conducted research and gave input to work done by Bassina Farbenblum, Laurie Berg and Angela Kintominas, and the final report from the initiative is now published by the Migrant Worker Justice Initiative, entitled Transformative Technology for Migrant Workers.

News, Research

Can beneficial ownership transparency really be compatible with data protection?

Tom Walker
22 October 2018

This blog post was co-written by Zosia Sztykowski, Project Lead, OpenOwnership and Tom Walker, Research Manager, The Engine Room. It originally appeared on the Open Government Partnership stories blog. In recent years, we’ve seen significant progress on clamping down on the abuse of anonymous company ownership through beneficial ownership transparency, both from international bodies like […]

Learnings & Reflections, Project update, Research

Collaborating to monitor abuse of power: why it matters and how it can be done

Paola Mosso
9 May 2018

In the past few years, Latin America has been hit hard with corruption scandals.The alarming Lava Jato scandal revealed how companies used networks of offshore entities across the region to launder money and fund bribes. In Peru alone, the Odebrecht company confirmed to the US Department of Justice that they made corrupt payments to Peruvian […]

Research

Biometrics in the humanitarian sector

Zara Rahman
15 March 2018

Over the past few months, we at The Engine Room, together with consultant Carly Nyst, have been working with Oxfam to better understand how biometric technologies are being used in the humanitarian sector and what we can learn from those experiences.