︎︎ Dr KitKat

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︎︎ Dr Kit Braybrooke is an anthropologist and artist-designer operating at the intersection of technology, art and ecology. By working with local communities across Europe, Asia and Canada to build more-than-human1 futures, their practice intervenes in Anthropocene-era ecological destruction by inviting new ways of walking together through digital and material terrains.

As a creative practitioner, they are Director of We&Us, a global FLINTA-run2 studio exploring co-creation for systems change since 2020 which applies an intersectional feminist lens drawn from the UN Sustainable Development Goals to challenge the power dynamics that reinforce inequality, isolation and exclusion, and bring about creative transformation. This work has been awarded funding from public institutions including Tate Modern, V&A Museum, British Council, UK Parliament, Create Ireland and Vancouver Public Library. They are also a co-founder of Art Tech Nature Culture, a transnational 500-member network of creative minds exploring ecological regeneration.

As an anthropologist, their work integrates pluriverse design and STS approaches, and they  publish ethnographic fieldwork on decolonial / feral technologies, experimental third places (feat. makerspaces, hackerspaces, museums, libraries & living labs) and emergent sites of more-than-human collaboration around the world. Their PhD thesis ‘Hacking the Museum’ examined the power dynamics of a new wave of public spaces for digital making within museums in London, with partners Tate Britain, Wellcome Collection and British Museum. They hold a PhD from Digital Humanities Lab, University of Sussex, and a MSc Digital Anthropology from University College London for ‘She-hackers’, the first study of European female hackers under age 30. 

Want to keep track? Find latest works exhibited at Tate Modern (London), 4S (Cholula), Arafura (Mexico City), Mozilla Fest (London), Uroboros Festival (Czech Republic) and Lighthouse Arts (Brighton) via Mesosanctuary, Tectonic Wanderer, Shùjùxiàn, Machine Ghosts, Dérive Drift and Space / Gather / Make!. Their work has also been featured at Portland Art Gallery, Campus Party, RTVE Spain, BBC News, Guardian, Furtherfield, DAZED & Rabble. Latest publications can be found here, and artworks-in-progress wash up regularly on the Tidepool.

Want to collaborate with Kit, hire them as a speaker, or get their latest holographic sticker for urbexing? Get in touch on Twitter & Instagram & email. These days they’re usually found in between Vancouver, Berlin, London and a spaceship in cyberspace. ︎

1. Including animal, vegetal, machine and algorithmic.
2. German term for women, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans & agender. More here.

SELECTED EXHIBITS & RESIDENCIES
Feb 2023 [exhibited artwork]: Mesosanctuary, ARAFURA, Mexico City, Mexico.
Dec 2022 [exhibited artwork]: Mesosanctuary, 4S/ECOSITE, Cholula, Mexico.
2021: New Scholars [creative fellow], Bristol & Bath Creative Ecologies R&D, Watershed, Bristol, UK.
2020-21: Steering Committee [co-founder & chair], Art/ Tech/ Nature/ Culture.
2019-current: Care-full Design Lab [extended member], School of Design, RMIT, Melbourne, AU.
2018, 2019: Living Research [delegate, making x circularity], British Council, Chengdu & Xi’an, China.
2015-19: Collaborative Doctoral Partnership [research residency], Digital Studio, Tate Britain, TATE, London, UK.
2018: Shùjùxiàn [exhibited artwork], Artists of the Open Web Exhibit, Mozfest, London, UK.
2017: Space/Gather/Make [curator], Art:Work, Tate Modern, TATE, London, UK.
2017: Haunted Random Forest Festival [curator], University of Sussex Digital Humanities Lab, UK.
2017: Machine Ghosts [exhibited artwork], Lighthouse Arts, Brighton, UK.
2017: Parallel Universes [design research residency], Future Makers Series, British Museum, UK.
2014: Art & Culture & Web [track curator], Mozilla Festival, London.
2013: Build & Teach the Web [track curator], Mozilla Festival, London UK.
2012: Open Knowledge Festival [co-founder and curator], Aalto University Media Factory, Helsinki.
2011: Open Government Data Camp [curator], Centrum Cyfrowe, Warsaw, PL.


SELECTED TALKS

Mar 2023: ‘An experimental exchange of ideas between journalists and socially-engaged artists’ [panel], Mozilla Festival.
Jan 2023: ‘Growing interdisciplinary virtual communities’ [panel], Beyond the Now, Berlin.
2022: ‘Climate stories and digital design’ [panel chair], 2022, Digital Design Week, Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), London, UK.
2022: ‘Anticipating change: From climate collapse to eco-social futures’ [panel], CreaTures Festival, ES.
2022: ‘Creative participatory methods in urban social research’ [guest lecture], Department of Sociology, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
2022: ‘Digital cultures for regeneration? Mutual aid and resistance in the Anthropocene’ [guest lecture], Mutual Affinities, Creative Scotland.
2022: ‘Undisciplined knowledge? Intervening in the climate crisis for trans/disciplinary regeneration’ [public lecture], University College London (UCL).
2021: ‘Digital spaces of resistance: Community histories of open source & the commons’ [guest lecture] Create Ireland x We/Us Digital Clinic.
2021: ‘Rethink the system, together: Makers and the circular economy in China’ [talk], Making Futures, Plymouth College of Art, UK. 
2021: ‘New coalitions in socially engaged digital practice’ [panel], Mozilla Festival.
2021: ‘Museums in a virtual age’ [panel], Faculty of Arts & Humanities, University College London, UK.
2020: ‘Arts practice otherwise’ [guest lecture], Crisis//Critical Education, ArtEZ University of Arts, Arnhem, NL.
2020: ‘Libraries & museums: Third spaces of?’ [panel], Neue Kulturgeographien, Bonn, Germany.
2019: ‘Hacking the museum? Space and power at London cultural institutions’[public lecture], Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, UK.
2019: ‘Maker cultures of the commons’ [talk], STEAMhouse Talks, Birmingham, UK.
2019: ‘Future perspectives: Making in 2030’ [talk], Sustainable Innovation, London, UK.
2018: ‘Makers - and museums - as a market’ [panel], Making It Conference, Liverpool, UK.
2018:Temporary shared machines: An open discussion with the Tate, hacked’ [talk], Electronic Visualisation & Arts (EVA), London, UK.
2018: ‘那些创造世界的人 | Make the world’ [panel], 中英创客生态分享会 Maker Exchange, ALLAB, Chengdu, China.
2017: ‘Power geometries in museums’ [panel],  Location & networked creativity in gamer, hacker and maker publics, AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers), Tartu, Estonia.
2016: Who’s the digital revolution for?’ [panel], Brighton Digital Festival, UK.
2016: ‘Hacking the museum?’ [panel], Digital fabrications of hackers, makers and manufacturers: whose 'industrial revolution'? 4S/EASST, Barcelona.
2016: ‘Speculative making: Possible futures’, Maker Assembly, Belfast.
2016: ‘Technologies and performative play: Re-creation and subversion of institutionalised cultures’ [panel], Forgotten genealogies of art, technology and science, Society for the History of Technology, National University of Singapore, SG.
2016: ‘From making to criticality and back again: Two makerspace futures’ [talk], Maker Assembly, Farest Labs Hackspace, Belfast, IR.
2013: ‘La Aventura de sabar: LibreGraphics and open design globally’ [interview], RTVE News.
2013: ‘Seven faces of open design’ [keynote], LibreGraphics, Madrid, SP.
2012: ‘Get more women on board: Tech, activism & gender [panel], Campus Party EU, Berlin, DE.
2012: ‘Hacking open data for creativity’ [talk], Re:publica Konference, Berlin.
2012:
Free city, open source’ [talk], Pixelache, Tallinn, Estonia.
2011: ‘Making the difference: Lady hackers’ [interview], BBC Radio, UK.
2011: ‘She-hackers: Gender in F/LOSS’ [talk], Chaos Communication Camp, Germany, DE.


SELECTED RESEARCH & TEACHING

2020-21: Research Fellow, CreaTures, Department of Engineering & Design, University of Sussex.
2020-21: Digital Anthropologist, Accessing Culture in Isolation, Covid-19 Rapid Response Grant, King’s College London & Keio University Tokyo.
2020-21: Visiting Researcher, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London.
2018-21: Editorial Board, Journal of Peer Production.
2020: Guest Lecturer, Cultural Diversity & Collaborative Practice Autumn School, Create Ireland, UK.
2019: Visiting Scholar, Institute for Transformations of Human-Environment Systems IRI-THEsys), Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, DE.
2018 & 2019: Visiting Lecturer, ‘Critical Making As’ series, ‘Making in the connected world’ BA course, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.
2019: Guest Lecturer, Geographisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Germany, DE.
2019: Guest Lecturer, Institut für Medienwissenschaft, Humboldt-Universität, Germany, DE.
2016-17: Visiting Lecturer & Co-convener, ‘Food + Code’ course, Design Products MA, Royal College of Art.
2016: Guest lecturer, University of the Arts London.
2016: Guest lecturer, Royal College of Art, London.
2015: Guest Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria.
2014: Education Chair, Maker Foundation, Vancouver.

i want to dance for the renewal of the world.” - robin well kimmerer