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  1. Home
  2. …
  3. People
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  5. Dr Sara Heitlinger
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photo of 	Sara Heitlinger

Dr Sara Heitlinger

Lecturer in Computer Science

School of Science & Technology Department of Computer Science

Contact details

  • +44 (0)20 7040 5060
  • sara.heitlinger@city.ac.uk

Address

Dr Sara Heitlinger A205, College Building [A]
City, University of London
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB
United Kingdom

Personal links

  • Connected Seeds and Sesors
  • About
  • Publications
  • Professional activities

About

Overview

I am a specialist in sustainable human-computer interaction (HCI) and design-led participatory research. My particular interests are in citizen-led innovation, urban agriculture, and smart cities. My research is grounded in participatory design, but I draw on methods and perspectives from the arts and humanities, such as feminist technoscience, and socially-engaged arts practice. I am motivated to find new approaches that help HCI move beyond authoritarian, top-down, efficiency-based solutions to sustainability, by co-designing new sociotechnical systems for urban cultural diversity and more-than-human cities.

Prior to coming to City, I was part of the Digital Local Democracy research strand in the Global Urban Research Centre at Newcastle University, where I investigated new methods for increasing citizen participation in democratic processes through co-designing “smart” urban food futures. I was also the lead researcher Co-Investigator on Connected Seeds and Sensors, an 18-month project based at Queen Mary University of London, where I investigated co-designing novel interactive Internet of Things systems with urban agricultural communities to support more sustainable food consumption and production in the city. For this project I won a Community Collaboration Award for Research at Queen Mary University of London in 2017.

Recently, I was the PI on Algorithmic Food Justice, a project exploring how new algorithmic technologies such as blockchain could be used to create a fairer and more sustainable food system (algorithmicfoodjustice.net). This was funded through an EPSRC Not-Equal Network Plus grant. I was also PI on More-than-Human Data Interactions in the Smart City, a project exploring how we might co-design data interactions in the smart city for more inclusive and sustainable urban cohabitation with other species (https://mothcities.uk). This was funded through an EPSRC Human Data Interactions Network Plus grant.

All my work is collaborative, and I am always keen to make new collaborative links.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Media and Arts Technology, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
  • MA in Creative Writing, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom
  • BSc in Computer Science, Hebrew University, Israel

Employment

  • Lecturer in Computer Science, City, University of London, Jan 2019 – present
  • Postdoctoral Research Associate, Newcastle University, Apr 2017 – Jan 2019
  • Researcher Co-Investigator, Queen Mary University of London, Oct 2015 – Mar 2017

Awards

  • Queen Mary University of London (2017) Community Collaboration Award for Research
    An award to recognise the people and projects at QMUL that work with the community to mutual benefit
  • UNESCO (2007) UNESCO Digital Arts Award

Publications

Featured publications

  1. Heitlinger, S., Bryan-Kinns, N. and Comber, R. (2019). The Right to the Sustainable Smart City. CHI '19: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/3290605.3300517

Publications by category

Conference papers and proceedings (13)

  • Chopra, S., Clarke, R.E., Clear, A.K., Heitlinger, S., Dilaver, O. and Vasiliou, C. (2022). Negotiating sustainable futures in communities through participatory speculative design and experiments in living. CHI '22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/3491102.3501929
  • Chopra, S., Clarke, R., Crivellaro, C., Clear, A., Heitlinger, S. and Dilaver, O. (2022). Infrastructuring ecological sustainability through multi-scalar speculations. PDC 2022: Participatory Design Conference 2022. doi:10.1145/3536169.3537776
  • Heitlinger, S., Houston, L., Taylor, A. and Catlow, R. (2021). Algorithmic Food Justice: Co-Designing More-than-Human Blockchain Futures for the Food Commons. CHI '21: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/3411764.3445655
  • Dolejšová, M., van Gaalen, S., Wilde, D., Raven, P.G., Heitlinger, S. and Light, A. (2020). Designing with More-than-Human Food Practices for Climate-Resilience. DIS '20: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2020. doi:10.1145/3393914.3395909
  • Heitlinger, S., Clarke, R., Clear, A.K., Chopra, S. and Dilaver, Ö. (2019). Co-creating “smart” sustainable food futures with urban food growers. doi:10.1145/3328320.3328399
  • Heitlinger, S., Bryan-Kinns, N. and Comber, R. (2018). Connected seeds and sensors: Co-designing internet of things for sustainable smart cities with urban food-growing communities. doi:10.1145/3210604.3210620
  • Heitlinger, S., Foth, M., Clarke, R., DiSalvo, C., Light, A. and Forlano, L. (2018). Avoiding ecocidal smart cities. PDC '18: Participatory Design Conference 2018. doi:10.1145/3210604.3210619
  • Clarke, R., Heitlinger, S., Foth, M., DiSalvo, C., Light, A. and Forlano, L. (2018). More-than-human urban futures. PDC '18: Participatory Design Conference 2018. doi:10.1145/3210604.3210641
  • Clarke, R.E., Briggs, J., Light, A., Heitlinger, S. and Crivellaro, C. (2014). Socially engaged arts practice in HCI. CHI '14: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/2559206.2559227
  • Heitlinger, S., Bryan-Kinns, N. and Jefferies, J. (2014). The talking plants. CHI '14: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/2559206.2574792
  • Heitlinger, S., Bryan-Kinns, N. and Jefferies, J. (2013). Sustainable HCI for grassroots urban food-growing communities. OzCHI '13: Augmentation, Application, Innovation, Collaboration. doi:10.1145/2541016.2541023
  • Heitlinger, S., Bryan-Kinns, N. and Jefferies, J. (2013). UbiComp for grassroots urban food-growing communities. UbiComp '13: The 2013 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. doi:10.1145/2494091.2497617
  • Heitlinger, S., Bryan-Kinns, N., Stockman, T., O'Flanagan, O. and Couzyn, T. (2012). The Talking Quilt - Augmenting domestic objects for communal meaning-making.

Exhibitions (2)

  • Clarke, R., Heitlinger, S., Foth, M., DiSalvo, C., Light, A. and Forlano, L. (2018). More-than-Human Urban Futures: Speculative Participatory Design to Avoid Ecocidal Smart Cities. 22 Aug 2018 – 2 Dec 2018, Z33 House for Contemporary Art.
  • Heitlinger, S. (2017). Connected Seeds. 31 Jan 2017 – 12 Feb 2017, Rich Mix Cultural Foundation.

Journal articles (4)

  • Nichols, P. and Heitlinger, S. (2022). Farm lab. Interactions, 29(1), pp. 16–19. doi:10.1145/3505275.

    [publisher’s website]

  • Clarke, R., Heitlinger, S., Light, A., Forlano, L., Foth, M. and DiSalvo, C. (2019). More-than-human participation. Interactions, 26(3), pp. 60–63. doi:10.1145/3319075.

    [publisher’s website]

  • Heitlinger, S. and Bryan-Kinns, N. (2013). Understanding performative behaviour within content-rich Digital Live Art. Digital Creativity, 24(2), pp. 111–118. doi:10.1080/14626268.2013.808962.

    [publisher’s website]

  • Heitlinger, S. (2010). Privileged Tactics. Wasafiri, 25(3), pp. 69–75. doi:10.1080/02690055.2010.486265.

    [publisher’s website]

Report

  • Heitlinger, S., Taylor, A., Clarke, R., Powell, A., Gaver, B., Boucher, A. … Doney, E. (2022). More-than-human data interactions in the city. London, UK.

Professional activities

Other (2)

  • Panel assessor for ESRC CONACYT Newton call for collaborative research: Smart Cities in Mexico, 2018.
  • Board member, Spitalfields City Farm, London.

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