Carolina Ossa

Carolina Ossa (they/them) is a Colombian researcher working on participatory approaches to data governance, collective decision-making, and futures.

Their work is shaped by a transdisciplinary background in neuroscience, art, and philosophy, and a long-standing curiosity about how the systems and tools we design shape how we relate, decide, and act together. They focus on how communities can meaningfully shape the systems that affect their lives particularly where decision-making is opaque, centralized, or extractive, and how these systems might instead support stronger, more relational forms of collective agency and action.

Their work builds on experience leading research in AI-driven platforms, where they designed systems to improve decision-making, surface power imbalances, and influence how those digital systems are governed.

Currently UK based, they’re pursuing an MSc in Data, Inequality and Society at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Their current work explores participatory approaches to data governance within a community context, prototyping ways for groups to define shared values, navigate tensions, and make collective decisions about data privacy, and governance.

They are particularly interested in how futures and foresight practices can support more plural alternatives that reflect the global majority, and what practices may enable communities to enact their agency and shape more just and equitable futures together.