“For better or for worse, technology shapes society, but we can - and must - influence the path it takes. Newspeak House is the place to tackle this head on”
Founder & President of Open Knowledge
Fellow of Newspeak House
“A residency at Newspeak House is a unique opportunity to connect with communities and ideas from across domains of politics, technology and social science”
Technology Lead for Digital Equity at The Wellcome Trust
Fellow of Newspeak House
Study With Us
Newspeak House is a hub for communities working to change society with technology, spanning all kinds of civic institutions, including government, politics, activism, charities, journalism, think-tanks, NGOs, philanthropy, and academia.
At the heart of Newspeak House is its residential programme, running since 2015. Seven residents spend a year immersed in these communities, enjoying the chance to meet thousands of people and attend events held on their doorstep.
The programme is designed to support mid-career technologists gain a holistic understanding of the civic landscape in the UK, in order to found groundbreaking new projects or seek strategic positions in key institutions. It’s ideal for people who have been working professionally for several years and are now looking to grow their network and spend time reflecting deeply on how they can best have impact on the world.
Residents will have the opportunity to:
- Be immersed in a wide variety of emerging civic communities of practice
- Engage with expert practitioners working in senior positions across UK institutions
- Develop strong relationships with a close cohort of peers while living together in centrally located college accommodation
- Work on your own projects with the guidance and mentorship of our faculty
A principal benefit of residency is the opportunity to engage with the collegiate environment and take an active interest in activities happening on campus. We prioritise applicants who are excited about connecting with and contributing to the work of other residents, fellows, members, organisers, and the growing communities working on political technology.
Residents should plan to spend at least sixteen hours a week focused on the course itself. This will be a mix of seminars, pair work, self-study, and attending events. Course content is re-written each year to reflect the dynamic nature of the field and the needs of the particular cohort, but broadly the first half of the year is focused on group exercises and getting an overview of the field, and the second half on developing your individual projects. Upon completing the course, you will be invited to join the Newspeak House fellowship , the start of a lifelong relationship with the institution and its networks.
You should apply if...
- There are wrongs in the world that you want to set right, and you feel a personal responsibility for taking action. This has affected your career decisions, or you have some track record of volunteering or organising. You worry about whether your work has impact.
- You’re in an exploratory mode. There are rapid changes happening in the world that you want to get a handle on. You don't currently have a single project that you're deeply focused on, and are open to meeting and learning from people who may not obviously possess knowledge you're looking for. You’re curious about the dynamics of unfamiliar groups, communities, networks, institutions, fields, and movements. You're able to engage tactfully with many different kinds of people, whose values and approaches you may not agree with.
- You believe in the importance of technology for social change. You've worked on a product or service, whether solo or as part of a team. You're not afraid of getting your hands dirty and making things. This does not necessarily mean that you're a software developer - amazing what you can do with no-code these days - but you're not put off by the idea that you might have to spend time figuring out how to build something.
- You enjoy meeting new people. Your best work is done in a communal setting in close proximity to others. You go to meetups for fun, perhaps you have organised one. You’re excited by the idea of spending several nights of the week attending events. You have some kind of online presence, and contribute to various online communities. You’re enthusiastic about sharing your knowledge and networks, as well as developing mentoring relationships.
- You bring with you a network that's not yet well represented at Newspeak House. We are looking for a diverse, interdisciplinary group that brings a mix of backgrounds, methodologies, fields, and professions — practitioners, organisers, researchers, developers, lawyers, advocates, activists, educators, entrepreneurs, journalists, technology industry actors, field builders, those coming out of a government office or position, policy analysts, public intellectuals, and those whose practice doesn’t fit squarely into conventional categories. If you’re not sure if you should apply, feel free to get in touch for a conversation about whether a residency might be right for you: [email protected]
Key Dates
| 2023 | |
|---|---|
| March | Applications Open |
| May onwards | Offers made |
| Late September | New residents move in |
| Start October | Autumn Term Starts |
| Early December | Autumn Term Ends |
| 2024 | |
| Early January | Spring Term Starts |
| Late March | Spring Term Ends |
| Mid April | Summer Term Starts |
| Mid July | Summer Term Ends |
| End July | Graduation |
Fees
The course fee for the entire year is £2400, payable upon acceptance of your offer.
Living in college accommodation is a mandatory part of the residency, and costs £1000 per calendar month, payable from October 2023 until August 2024 inclusive. This is inclusive of all bills and includes a full time facilities manager and a cleaner for common areas.
Thanks to generous gifts from fellows and community members, there are some full and partial scholarships available. Please indicate in your application if your participation is contingent on a scholarship.
How to Apply
There is a short application form, primarily to give us an idea of what your interests are, and to start a conversation with us as to whether a residency might be the right thing for you. Applications are taken on a rolling basis until all spaces are filled. We encourage you to submit your application even if you're not sure if you want to take the course, or if you feel you don't have time to complete the form to your satisfaction. It should take less than 20 mins to complete.
After you’ve submitted your application, you’ll be invited to
- attempt a short written task that should take no more than an hour
- attend an interview, either at the college or remotely
Newspeak House is strengthened by the diversity of our network and our differences in background, culture, experience, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and much more. We strongly encourage applications from people of colour, women, the LGBTQIA community, and disabled people. Unfortunately though, the lodgings offered are not wheelchair accessible, and space is not available for partners/family. Also, aside from service animals, roaming pets are not permitted.
While we welcome applications from outside the United Kingdom, we are currently unable to support the acquisition of visas. If you are applying from outside the United Kingdom and are accepted, you will need to secure your own visa and, depending on your situation, work permit.
You're welcome to reapply if you don't get selected the first time.
If you have any questions about the course or the application process, don't hesitate to reach out via [email protected] or @nwspk. Questions about the opportunity or process will not reflect negatively on an application.
Pastoral Care
The wellbeing of our residents is of great importance to us. Newspeak House employs an interfaith minister and retains a pastoral board who are there to provide support for the emotional and psychological health of those who stay with us.
Even in communities where everyone has the best of intentions, things can sometimes go wrong. Our pastoral team are experienced in community harm prevention and response, and we will proactively deal with any conflicts or pastoral issues should they arise.
If you would like to know more about our pastoral provisions, please contact [email protected]
Newspeak House Fellowship
Those who successfully complete the residential programme become Fellows of Newspeak House. We now have over 90 fellows in our network and they can be found in significant positions across many prominent institutions. As fellows of the college, they have the right to attend college ceremonies and access certain special fellowship activities.
Head of Design Research, FutureGov/TPXimpact, prev GOV.UK User Research Lead, Government Digital Service
Neurovascular Fellow at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Director / Co-founder OA.Works, Assistant Director, Right to Research Coalition, Organiser, OpenCon
Founder, Open Knowledge
Code Fellow, Open Data Institute
Historian of AI; Affiliate, Berkman Klein Centre Harvard, Research Fellow, St. Edmund’s College & Department of History and Philosophy of Science (Cambridge), Associate Fellow, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence
Design & Neuroscience, Lingumi
Climate Tech Investor
Ford-Mozilla Fellow, Center for Democracy & Technology
Co-founder, Local Welcome
Founder, Forward Democracy
Postdoctoral Researcher, Computational Propaganda, Oxford Internet Institute
Research Director, Centre for Analysis of Social Media
Senior Technology Advisor, Competition Markets Authority
PhD, NLP and news
Research Engineer / Machine Learning
Senior Researcher, mySociety
Head of Policy, Royal Society, Councillor for Canning Town North
Head of Digital Policy, National Lottery Heritage Fund
Consultant & Writer on Web3, cryptowriting.net
Applying mathematics and data science to inefficient markets
[email protected]
Founder, wings.coop
Charity Funding / Web Apps / Data Science
Mozilla Senior Fellow, AlgorithmWatch, Data Governance Models
Head of Forecasting, Zeitgeist
Senior Policy Manager, NHSX Centre for Improving Data Collaboration
Systems designer, participatory and horizontal forms of governance, community catalyst and facilitator. Working on new forms of governance for a better world. Currently: DGOV Foundation, Enspiral, Edmund Hillary Fellow, RSA Fellow, Associate Lecturer Schumacher College. @solarpunk_girl [email protected]
Digital and organisational change consultant to the charity sector. Intersticia Fellow, trustee of Turn2us and chair of Trajectory Theatre. Former agency MD, board of Sadler’s Wells. #1 woman in digital under 30, The Drum 2014. Immersive digital art enthusiast. Yoga teacher. @jokerrconsults, linkedin/jokerrconsults, [email protected]
Executive Director & Senior Research Scientist, Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University
Co-Founder, InFact Digital Co-op
Applying data science and machine learning to the root causes of environmental issues.
[email protected]
Systems, software and bioengineer; technologist; environmentalist - currently working as Head of Software at Litho to redefine the paradigm of education using AR EdTech. @la_jones21
Founder & Principal Data Scientist @ Coefficient
Community Manager/Developer, WT.Social, looking for ways to decrease toxicity online, Wikipedia Administrator
Head of Strategy and International, UK Government Office for Artificial Intelligence
Full stack engineer
Founder of Impact Shakers; passionate about the potential of entrepreneurship to change systems; humanist & technologist; zebra
Reach out if you’re interested in the future of work, food systems, platforms & communities, housing projects, adult education, ethical consumerism, representation, protest, parliament. @sabkava, [email protected]
Global Programmes Lead, Social Innovation Exchange
Open Tech Lead, NHS England
Senior developer and tech lead with substantive experience in digital identity from my time at Government Digital Service. I founded Police Rewired - a volunteer community for technologists working on problems in public safety and crime.
Founder & CEO of Hatch, a start-up to connect people with ways to take action on social causes. Background in international development (especially Pakistan), conflict management, and liberal politics. Research interests: institutional information ecologies, distributed agency and user-centred design in communities and organisations. [email protected]
Studying systems change at the intersection of tech, society and government. Currently working as a consultant on strategy and partnerships for Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada. @DerekAlton, LinkedIN.
Connection and intimacy activist, software engineer, technologist, community builder. @pawel_krupinski
Number theory, Machine learning, Global development, Effective altruism
[email protected]
Designer. Building Vouch, a new way to get hired.
@systemantix
Network Development Lead, UK Democracy Network
Computer science researcher, with a focus on low-resource languages in Wikipedia and Wikidata. Affiliated to University of Southampton and intern at Bloomberg. Working on the Scribe project. @frimelle
Improving journalism and publishing with JoeDocs.com and HackThePress.org
Software developer, open data & knowledge enthusiast - Tech Lead for Wikidata, a CC0 licenced structured data repository sistered with Wikipedia.
Also working on a side project called WBStack, lowering the barrier to entry for the Wikibase software stack for all.
Blog, GitHub, @Twitter, LinkedIn, Email
I currently working as Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO, helping UN agencies share their knowledge on Wikipedia. Previously I worked at the Natural History Museum and Science Museum in London, I helped run Wikimania 2014, and started MonmouthpediA, a community Wikipedia project in my home town.
Coach and Facilitator. Main points of focus: the climate emergency, miscommunication both online and offline, and loneliness in cities. [email protected]
Social Entrepreneur, Innovator, Collector, Advisor
The Social Innovation Partnership, Turning Basin Labs
@stephentsip
Editor-at-large, TechCrunch
Co-founder: @TechForUK, @ThePathfounder, @TheEuropas, @tech_vets, @Techfugees, @TechHub, @Coadec
@MikeButcher
Geospatial analysis and information management at UN International Organization for Migration, and researching protracted refugee settlements using Space Syntax methodologies at the Bartlett, UCL.
[email protected]
Coder, Canadian civil servant (talent.canada.ca)
Civic tech community organizer (civictech.ca, hypha.coop, codeacross.ca, g0v.london)
[email protected], @patcon_
Product Manager at Open Function, bringing open source process automation to governments and social-impact organizations
[email protected], @a_rignell
Director of Standards and Interoperability, NHSX, Founder, Redecentralize.org
Governance lead @protein
Metagovernance, DAOs, Exit to Community
[email protected], @zhiganov, linktr.ee/zhiganov
Privacy, Climate change, Data science
[email protected]
Barrister, Garden Court Chambers, Founder, Lawyers for Nature
Software Engineer, Wave Mobile Money
Technical Project Manager, Logically.ai, using AI and OSINT to tackle disinformation at scale
$whoami
Cyber, misinfosec, OSINT
War Studies BA @ KCL & Data and Society @ LSE
@clementbriens, @misinfosecUK
CEO, Cosmos Pics
climate × edtech
co-founder & CTO, greenworkx
[email protected], @richardcrng, richard.ng
History of AI, Reinforcement Learning, Complexity Science, Political Theory
[email protected]
Behavioral ecologist (ants & termites), Architect
[email protected], @matthewjlutz, matthewlutz.net
Software developer, intersectional feminist, community builder
Finding systemic solutions to bringing more representation in technology and exploring matriarchy
@Agata_Anastazja
Ethical platform / protocol engineer focused on decentralized, privacy-preserving identity and data storage solutions
[email protected], @ianconsolata
Founder at Azvai.com, an innovation and sustainability consultancy inspired by non-dualistic thinking
Economist (Urban and Applied Micro), Data scientist, Researcher at UCL Department of Economics
Projects: Ethnic Discrimination in Rental Market, Roadworks Side Effects on Restaurants, Public Transport and Employment Gender Gap, Forced Migration and Development
@VVeterinarov, [email protected]