Shaping the digital future of our city
Future Society Lab is Rotterdam's leading knowledge and network platform at the intersection of digital transformation and urban society. We bring together researchers, policymakers, educators and practitioners to explore what digital technology means for the city and its people.
Not a think tank.
A living laboratory.
"The question is not what AI can do — but who decides which values get built into it."
Future Society Lab Meetup | December 2025 | Sociaal AI Lab RotterdamFuture Society Lab was launched in 2024 as an initiative of the Municipality of Rotterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam. It grew from the former Urban Big Data knowledge lab into a broader, interdisciplinary platform that operates at the boundary between technological innovation and urban life.
We connect universities, universities of applies sciences, vocational colleges, government departments, civic organisations and creative professionals; all working together to understand how digital technology is reshaping Rotterdam, and to ensure that this transformation serves everyone who lives and works here.
Our work is grounded in a fundamental conviction: technology must connect, not divide. Every person in Rotterdam should have a voice in how the digital city is designed. And every digital system should be built around human values — transparency, accountability, inclusion.
Future Society Lab is not a standard research group. We build on interdisciplinary collaboration, practical experiments, and a growing network of hundreds of participants. We share knowledge through meetups, workshops, co-design sessions, and joint pilot projects.
Three teams exploring tomorrow's city
Rotterdam is developing a European alternative to the commercial metaverse: a thoughtful fusion of the city's physical, social and digital layers. The Citiverse must be "contestable by design": every citizen should have the right to question the infrastructure. Team Citiverse explores inclusion, interoperability, and ethics in this new urban layer.
Digital humans and AI agents will play a growing role in public life. Team Digital Humans leads the Digiderius project, bringing Desiderius Erasmus back to life as a digital human — to probe how we relate to AI entities in education, civic engagement and urban interaction. Not as replacements for people, but as 'augmented beings' that can empathise and respond contextually.
Digital technology has a profound impact on our society. Team Society asks: what does technology mean for the people of Rotterdam and what do they mean for technology? The team works on new forms of participation that bring young people, students and marginalised communities into technological policymaking and ensures that lived experience is valued as much as technical expertise.
Meet us.
Think with us.
Future Society Lab organises regular meetups, co-design sessions and public workshops. These are not passive lectures; they are working sessions where researchers, practitioners and citizens think together about the digital future of Rotterdam. All events are free and open to newcomers.
This is not a meetup you can attend passively. With technology accelerating, societal pressures mounting, and systems changing, what does resilience actually mean? A hands-on afternoon co-developed with Maurice de Beer (Veiligheidsregio Rotterdam-Rijnmond), designed to change how you see technology, systems, and your own role when certainties disappear.
Register: harmen@futuresocietylab.comThree themes explored: how technology can connect rather than divide; what responsible AI looks like in practice; and how Rotterdam can build genuine urban resilience. Speakers included researchers from ESSB, Hogeschool Rotterdam, and practitioners from the Veiligheidsregio Rotterdam-Rijnmond.
PastAn interdisciplinary gathering with an academic, a physician, an architect, a politician and a social entrepreneur; each exploring what AI means for the soul of Rotterdam. Five confronting insights emerged, from biased medical AI to how cities are reduced to marketable brands.
PastAn ecosystem rooted in Rotterdam
Be part of
the conversation.
Future Society Lab brings together researchers, city officials, educators, technologists and citizens. Whether you want to attend a meetup, join a research team or become a partner: we'd love to hear from you.