Imperial College London’s Sustainable Society Network+, in collaboration with the Van Alen Institute, invites proposals for its pilot studies and challenge fellowships – digital technologies, the city and addictive behaviours. This aims to explore how digital technologies can be used to better understand the complex relationship between the built environment of the city and addictive behaviours. Proposals should investigate this from perspectives in the engineering, social and economic sciences, such as environmental psychology, human-computer interaction, geography, sociology, epidemiology, architecture and urban planning.

Researchers should address one or more addictive behaviours including drugs, alcohol, work, food, shopping, the internet or social media, exercise, or any other habit-forming substances or activities, and inquire if characteristics of a city’s form encourage or discourage these addictions. The scale of the investigation may vary from the level of neighbourhood, district or city as a whole, but proposals must focus on a UK city with available…