We are interested in the materiality of care: how digital, architectural and urban infrastructures, as well as everyday objects, re-configure, redistribute and re-define relationships and practices of care and support. Also, how these materialities are appropriated and resignified by the people who care and are cared for and how this affects the distribution of work, responsibilities, and what we understand by good and bad care.

From an intersectional perspective, we study community care and grassroots support initiatives. We are interested in understanding how people in need of care (people with functional diversity, mental illness, the elderly, with chronic conditions or in the process of ending their lives), as well as the people who care for, transform care and their own condition into a political issue. We analyze how these groups, communities and networks experiment with new models and notions of care, and at the same time, make visible the limitations, discriminations or forms of violence that the most conventional models imply.

From participatory and inclusive perspectives, we study the role of knowledge and technology in the transformation of care and support in emergency, crisis and disaster situations. On the one hand, we are interested in the role of care and support, especially those mediated by digital infrastructures, in dealing with and recovering from crisis situations. On the other hand, we study and promote more integrated and inclusive ways of managing and reducing the risk of crises and disasters.

CareNet is also interested in the non-humans with whom we share existence (animals, plants, objects, etc.). Drawing on philosophy, studies of science and technology (STS) or design, we make visible the interdependencies with more-than-human beings, for example in practices of maintenance and repair of objects and technologies, in the relationship with other animals or plants, and how this makes us think in ethics and politics for the climate, environmental and social crisis we live in.