Staff Profile
Dr Vasilis Vlachokyriakos
Reader (Associate Professor)
- Email: vasilis.vlachokyriakos1@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: +44 (0) 7508442767
- Address: Open Lab, School of Computing,
Urban Sciences Building,
1 Science Square,
Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE4 5TG
I am currently a Reader (Associate Professor) of Human-Computer Interaction and Digital Civics at Open Lab, Newcastle University, School of Computing. I have a background in Computing Science with a MSc (Hons) in Computer Security and Resilience and a PhD in HCI (E-Voting as a tool for Political Participation).
My current work centres on designing novel socio-technical infrastructures for civic participation through place-based, participatory and action-led research, aiming at the development of systems for cooperative decision-making and service provision (i.e. CSCW and PD research and practice).
Example ongoing projects include: the utilisation of emerging technologies (AR, crypto-wallets, social and location-based technologies etc.) for the cooperative production of public services (e.g. CO3 project); the creation of technological and legal toolkits for generative commons (e.g. GE.CO project); the infrastructuring of the Social and Solidarity Economy in Europe (e.g. see CHI 2018 methods paper and CHI 2017 design manifesto paper); the design of inclusive and socially just Solidarity Economy Platforms (e.g. PhD candidate projects [V.N., A.T. and S.A.]); and the designing of social digital innovation in Lebanon (e.g. Sarah Armouch's PhD project).
As part of this research agenda, I am a co-investigator for the H2020 “Generative European Commons Living Lab” (Ge.CO Living Lab), a co-investigator of the EPSRC Digital Economy Research Center (DERC) and of our newly awarded EPSRC Centre for Digital Citizens – Next Stage Digital Economy Centre; while also been the principal investigator of Open Lab Athens for the H2020 “Digital Disruptive Technologies to co-create, co-produce and co-manage Open Public Services” (CO3) project. I am also a reviewer and program committee member of a number ACM conferences, of the Participatory Design conference and of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
For more information see my Google Scholar and Newcastle University profiles.
At the core of my research is an understanding of designing digital systems as ways that we shape our environments. As is widely known in HCI and explored in Participatory Design research, the dissemination of computing systems in most strata of society puts designers in a position of power against systems’ users - i.e. citizens. This has lately become more apparent due to the substantial implications of these systems in shaping the ways through which we make decisions, we produce, consume and exchange, and the ways through which we understand and participate in politics.
Any system can be described as an abstract representation of its inputs and outputs. The ways through which data is being represented, stored and governed, and the processing logic of the system for transforming and negotiating the data that receives and produces. Taking a Digital Civics approach on systems design, my research raises questions about the provenance of technological innovations, the socio-political effects of the research and artefacts that we produce, our research and systems’ data management and ownership processes and the ways through which multiple passive or active agents negotiate and transform such data. My current research attempts to shed light onto such inquiries by following a commons-based approach for the creation of systems to promote open and participatory production and governance processes.
The approach through which I work to achieve such a co-operative transition include: place-based research with groups active in creating novel methods of production and distribution, configuration of academic partnerships to mirror cooperative work, the design and development of systems to infrastructure local cooperatives, the development of sociotechnical innovations for the dissemination of peer-to-peer methods of production and governance etc.
Currently I am primarily teaching modules for our MSc in Human-Computer Interaction, including CSC8607 – Research Methods for Human Computer Interaction, CSC8604 – Technologies for Human Computer Interaction, CSC8609 – Project in Human Computer Interaction and CSC8611 Human-AI interaction and Futures.
- Taylor AS, Lindley S, Regan T, Sweeney D, Vlachokyriakos V, Grainger L, Lingel J. Data-in-Place: Thinking through the Relations Between Data and Community. In: 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). 2015, Seoul, Republic of Korea: Association for Computing Machinery.
- Vlachokyriakos V, Comber R, Ladha K, Taylor N, Dunphy P, McCorry P, Olivier P. PosterVote: expanding the action repertoire for local political activism. In: ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS'14). 2014, Vancouver, Canada: ACM Press.
- Vlachokyriakos V, Crivellaro C, LeDantec C, Gordon E, Wright P, Olivier P. Digital Civics: Citizen empowerment with and through technology. In: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016. 2016, Santa Clara, California, USA: Association for Computing Machinery.
- Vlachokyriakos V, Crivellaro C, Wright P, Karamagioli E, Staiou E-R, Gouscos D, Thorpe R, Kruger A, Schoning J, Jones M, Lawson S, Olivier P. HCI, solidarity movements and the solidarity economy. In: CHI'17 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings. 2017, Denver, Colorado: Association for Computing Machinery.
- Vlachokyriakos V, Crivellaro C, Wright P, Olivier P. Infrastructuring the Solidarity Economy: Unpacking Strategies and Tactics in Designing Social Innovation. In: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18). 2018, Montreal, Canada: ACM.
- Crivellaro C, Anderson R, Lambton-Howard D, Nappey T, Olivier P, Vlachokyriakos V, Wilson A, Wright P. Infrastructuring public service transformation: Creating collaborative spaces between communities and institutions through HCI research. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 2019, 26(3), 15.
- Talhouk R, Ahmed SI, Wulf V, Crivallero C, Vlachokyriakos V, Olivier P. Refugees and HCI SIG: The Role of HCI in Responding to the Refugee Crisis. In: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016. 2016, Santa Clara, CA, USA: ACM.
- Dunphy P, Vines J, Coles-Kemp L, Clarke R, Vlachokyriakos V, Wright P, McCarthy J, Olivier P. Understanding the experience-centeredness of privacy and security technologies. In: 2014 New Security Paradigms Workshop NSPW '14. 2014, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: Association for Computing Machinery.
- Ntouros V, Kouki H, Vlachokyriakos V. Designing Sharing Economy Platforms through a ‘Solidarity HCI’ lens. In: ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. 2021, Association for Computing Machinery.
- Vlachokyriakos V, Crivellaro C, Kouki H, Giovanopoulos C, Olivier P. Research with a Solidarity Clinic: Design Implications for CSCW Healthcare Service Design. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2021, 30, 757-783.
- Abdulgalimov D, Kirkham R, Nicholson J, Vlachokyriakos V, Briggs P, Olivier P. Designing for Employee Voice. In: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2020, Honolulu, Hawaii: ACM.
- Vlachokyriakos V. Materialising activism through HCI research. In: 2020 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2020, Honolulu, Hawaii: ACM.
- Lambton-Howard D, Olivier P, Vlachokyriakos V, Celina H, Kharrufa A. Unplatformed Design: A Model for Appropriating Social Media Technologies for Coordinated Participation. In: CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2020, Hawaii, USA: ACM.
- Prost S, Vlachokyriakos V, Midgley J, Heron G, Meziant K, Crivellaro C. Infrastructuring Food Democracy: The Formation of a Local Food Hub in the Context of Socio-Economic Deprivation. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2019, 3(CSCW), 57.
- Nicholson J, Vlachokyriakos V, Coventry L, Briggs P, Olivier P. Simple nudges for better password creation. In: Proceedings of the 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference (HCI 2018). 2018, Belfast, UK: BCS Learning and Development Ltd.
- Lindley SE, Thieme A, Taylor AS, Vlachokyriakos V, Regan T, Sweeney D. Surfacing Small Worlds through Data-In-Place. Computer Supported Cooperative Work: CSCW: An International Journal 2017, 26(1), 135-163.
- Kirkham R, Ebassa R, Montague K, Morrissey K, Vlachokyriakos V, Weise S, Olivier P. WheelieMap: An Exploratory System for Qualitative Reports of Inaccessibility in the Built Environment. In: MobileHCI 2017 19th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. 2017, Vienna: ACM.
- Vlachokyriakos V. Designing the Vote: An Exploration of Electronic Voting as a tool for Political Participation [PhD Thesis]. Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle University, 2016.
- Crivellaro C, Taylor A, Vlachokyriakos V, Comber R, Nissen B, Wright P. Re-Making Places: HCI, 'Community Building' and Change. In: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016. 2016, San Jose, CA, USA: ACM Press.
- Dunphy P, Nicholson J, Vlachokyriakos V, Briggs P, Olivier P. Crowdsourcing and CCTV: the Effect of Interface, Financial Bonus and Video Type. Newcastle upon Tyne: School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2015. School of Computing Science Technical Report Series 1453.
- Vlachokyriakos V, Comber R, Crivellaro C, Taylor N, Kuznetsov S, Kavanaugh A, Le Dantec C, Kim BJ. Designing Alternative Systems for Local Communities. In: CHI EA '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2015, Seoul, Republic of Korea: ACM.
- Regan T, Sweeney D, Helmes J, Vlachokyriakos V, Lindley S, Taylor A. Designing Engaging Data in Communities. In: 33rd Annual Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI EA '15. 2015, Seoul, Republic of Korea: Association for Computing Machinery.
- Vlachokyriakos V, Dunphy P, Taylor N, Comber R, Olivier P. BallotShare: An exploration of the design space for digital voting in the workplace. Computers in Human Behavior 2014, 41, 433-443.
- Vlachokyriakos V, Dunphy P, Taylor N, Comber R, Olivier P. BallotShare: Exploring the design space of digital voting in a workplace environment. Newcastle upon Tyne: School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014. School of Computing Science Technical Report Series 1410.
- Kamal N, Munson S, Vlachokyriakos V, Fergusson M, Fels S. Introduction to the special issue on designing social media for change. Computers in Human Behavior 2014, 41, 403-404.
- Vlachokyriakos V, Dunphy P, Taylor N, Comber R, Olivier P. Unpicking the design space of e-Voting for Participation. In: International Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government 2013 (CeDEM2013). 2013, Krems, Austria: Centre for E-Government, Danube University Krems.
- Vines J, Blythe M, Dunphy P, Vlachokyriakos V, Teece I, Monk A, Olivier P. Cheque Mates: Participatory Design of Digital Payments with Eighty Somethings. In: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI'12). 2012, Austin, Texas, USA: ACM Press.
- Ntouros V, Kouki H, Vlachokyriakos V. Designing Sharing Economy Platforms through a 'Solidarity HCI' lens. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2021, 5(CSCW1), 1–25.
- Vlachokyriakos V, Crivellaro C, Kouki H, Giovanopoulos C, Olivier P. Research with a Solidarity Clinic: Design Implications for CSCW Healthcare Service Design. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2021, 30, 757-783.