Social workers increasingly use automated digital tools to communicate with citizens, to assess their eligibility for social support and to pursue investigations of fraud. These tools are examined by our researcher dr. Lior Volinz, who co-organized, in the framework of our research project SURVEILWEL, an international academic workshop titled ‘Understanding and Re-Imagining the Digital Welfare State‘ on February 12-13th 2026 at Oslomet University in Norway.
With over 30 presenters and 60 participants, the brought together researchers and policy makers working on the digital welfare state, who together discussed the transformations happening today and the positive and negative visions for the future. Through creative ‘future labs’, the participants tried to imagine utopian and dystopian futures on how surveillance and automation can transform the welfare state.
The workshop was organized by dr. Lior Volinz (Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law, Ljubljana) and dr. Marijke Roosen (Oslomet). It was supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship programme and with support from DIGIT research school (Oslo, Norway).
