Collaborative Grants

An increasingly important and overlooked dimension of digital content quality for kids is the level of visual stimulation. This project uses computer vision to quantify these overstimulating visual features that are linked to adverse cognitive and behavioral outcomes.

This project revisits the net neutrality debate in light of contemporary technological realities. Distributed caching infrastructure is no longer incidental; it is functionally necessary for high-performance internet service. The authors propose democratizing caching by requiring that first-hop ISPs offer standardized caching services as a component of baseline broadband access.

This project looks at how AI is being developed and adopted within religious organizations. This is a project that spans disciplinary boundaries, bringing digital sociology and the sociology of culture into conversation with theology and religious studies.

Mobile home parks are critical because they provide affordable housing in a market where affordability is otherwise scarce, but they're also double burdened, vulnerable to both climate risks and financial exploitation. This research focuses on insurance in mobile home parks (MHPs) as an extreme case to explore the overlap of the climate and home affordability crisis in California.

Geoengineering raises questions both about how to govern research and also how to govern future deployment. this BESI Tech Collaborative Grant project brings multiple teams focusing on the technologies, ethics, and governance of geoengineering.

The digital economy has penetrated nearly every aspect of society. This research project seeks to examine the effects of this prolific phenomenon on our social and personal development, our ability to access basic needs and social services, and our political and legal institutions and culture.