Heloisa Melino has been working in recent years together with Hari Harindranath and Tim Unwin on the use of digital technologies by those living on the periferias (peripheries) in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, especially in Maré. Much of this research-practice has focused on developing resources and providing training on the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech within the LBT communities there, with some of our co-designed resources being launched at the Casa Resistências in Maré in September 2024. More recent activities including a rare dance performance on the use of digital tech by Efeito Urbano in Morro da Providência took place in June/July 2025, funded through Royal Holloway’s Social Science Impact Accelerator (SSIA).
As an extension of this work, Heloisa was granted a Social Science Impact Residency to spend the month of March 2026 based at Royal Holloway, University of London, to explore further collaborations and synergies that will extend our research-practice together and explore new openings for future cooperation. As part of this, she presented a fascinating and thought provoking seminar on Latin American and Brazilian Perspectives on Decoloniality of Knowledge on 12th March, which gave rise to much subsequent discussion
Her slide deck is available below (click on the image), excluding the 4 minute music video (Residente – This is Not America) on Slide 4 which can be accessed from the original on YouTube.
We are most grateful to Heloisa for spending this month with us and look forward to continued research practice with her and those she works with in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the years ahead.
Following our impact activities in Brazil during 2024, Prof Hari Harindranath returned to Rio de Janeiro in June/July 2025 to work with our local research partner, Dr Heloisa Melino, and organisations there for a series of follow-on activities funded by Royal Holloway’s Social Science Impact Accelerator (SSIA). These included three main activities.
1. Amplifying the impact of our work through artistic means
Efeito Urbano, an arts organisation and social project, based in the Providência favela of Rio de Janeiro, showcased a creative performance on digital safety in the periferias which drew on SSIA-funded work previously undertaken by Collective members, Prof Harindranath, Prof Tim Unwin and Dr Heloisa Melino and the experiences of the artists themselves with social networks and digital technologies.
Efeito Urbano is the first professional dance company in Morro da Providência and has developed its own concept of creation and research, Dança Urbana Negra Periférica, based on the pillars of race, gender and territory as well as traditional and contemporary Afro-referenced dances, in addition to the diverse expressions and cultural manifestations of experiences in the favelas and peripheries
The dancers put on a stunning performance capturing the intertwining of physical and digital lives in the favelas of Rio (link here to a short video). Choreographer Juliana Mello explained that the performance was a starting point for their new residency aimed at reflecting, through the language of dance, how the peripheral body navigates, resists and reinvents itself in the digital environment, with its strengths, pitfalls and invisibilities. Producer Ellen Pereira da Costa talked about the importance of engaging young people through artistic means to spread important messages such as the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech in their contexts which are often characterised by scams, identity theft and violence, both physical and online. Their aim was “to explore the potential of art as a languagethat activates different senses compared to textual narratives, by engaging the body and movement in the exchange of knowledge on a topic as urgent and necessary as this – particularly among vulnerable populations, who make up the core audience of Instituto Efeito Urbano”.
2. Extending our work on the safe, wise and secure use of digital technologies by vulnerable groups
This visit allowed us to extend our work on digital safety nasperiferias from our earlier focus on communities in the Maré favela of Rio de Janeiro to young people in the Morro da Providência favela and the surrounding areas. Following the Efeito Urbano performance, Hari and Heloisa led a workshop on the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech by vulnerable groups with some of the artists and members of the audience. Participants were keen to share their online experiences with each other and through the creation of a series of short videos.
3. Evidencing the impact of our ongoing work
We undertook an Outcomes Meeting to gather qualitative feedback on impacts and outcomes from our activities during 2024 with our main partner organisation, Casa Resistências in the Maré favela of Rio. The team at Casa Resistências, an LBT advocacy organisation and a shelter for women fleeing violence and abuse, had previously collaborated with us on activities relating to the safe, wise and secure use of digital technologies nas periferiasincluding a workshop led by Dr Heloisa Melino and the creation of a range of beautiful resources on digital safety designed by local graffiti artist, JLo. These and related activities were aimed at helping activists and others remain safe online while they report on rights violations and undertake their advocacy campaigns. Hari’s visit offered the opportunity to reflect on our activities and their impacts and outcomes.
Kimberly Veiga from Casa Resistências explained that our collaboration had helped build capacity and enabled them to undertake further activities with local partners such as Fiocruz University on online safety for activists and others in the favelas. She spoke of the impact of online harms for people in her context including online scams, digital identity theft and violence.
This collaboration has allowed us to think about technology as a route to access rights and it has opened another avenue for us to obtain wider support… It has helped us connect with wider networks of support. We now exchange experiences and access support from across the country, including psychological and therapeutic care…Thanks to this collaborative work, we have now created a new agenda on digital for our organisation
Kimberly Veiga, Casa Resistências
Kimberly spoke of the cascading effect of our collaboration that led them to undertake activities relating to the challenges faced by lesbian mothers and the creation of trustworthy resources to support them, similar to the ones we helped create on the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech by vulnerable groups in the Brazilian periferias. Fernanda highlighted the importance of our resources not only as a means to disseminate messages on online safety at all the events they attend but also as a means to enhance the visibility of the broader advocacy work being undertaken by Casa Resistências.
The visit also enabled Hari and Heloisa to meet with Voz das Comunidades, a community media organisation based in the Complexo do Alemão (Alemão complex of favelas in Rio) where they presented their ongoing work on the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech in the peripheries. The team at Voz shared their experiences of working in the challenging context of the favelas and the importance of physical and online safety as they go about recording and reporting on community matters.
Voz das Comunidades and their Social Impact team expressed interest in working with us in the future. So, watch this space!
In summary, our impact agenda in Brazil funded by SSIA has allowed us to work with multiple organisations and communities in the peripheries of Rio to spread awareness on the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech by vulnerable groups, helped build capacity of both individuals and organisations and reach a broader range of groups through engaging workshops and creative activities and multimedia outputs relevant to the local contexts in Brazil. Hari hopes to continue further collaborative work in Brazil with Heloisa given the interest and enthusiasm shown by local organisations.
We are delighted to share the news that Profs G. ‘Hari’ Harindranath and Tim Unwin have received the award for “Best Collaborative and Innovation Research Project” from Royal Holloway, University of London for 2025 at their annual Festival of Research on 19th June for their ongoing research-practice with many other organisations across four continents on the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech in marginalised/peripheral communities, working especially with migrants and refugees. [The background to the image on the right is from one of their visits to the UNESCO offices in Nepal in 2023]
Their ‘project project was informed by social science research and resulted in the generation of interventions and training resources that were adopted by community groups and NGOs’ … To deliver outputs at scale, they have ‘engaged innovatively with international stakeholders, including third sector organisations (NGOs), international bodies (UNESCO, IOM, ILO) and key industry partners (community tech organisations). The sheer size, scale and duration of project activities are testament to the hard work’ they have invested. ‘Generating partnerships on such a global scale will not have come without its challenges, so [they] should be incredibly proud of [their] achievements in undertaking such a huge project’
Awards citation for research collaboration and innovation, Royal Holloway, University of London
More details of their work can be seen as follows:
Their main contributions on migrant use of digital tech within the UKRI GCRF funded MIDEQ project (2019-2024) can be fiund through these links:
Links to main work in Nepal (including freely available resources)
Guidance for small civil society organisations in English and Portuguese (for Mozambique)
Many organisations are contributing to this ongoing research, and full acknowledgement to them all is given in the links above.
A list of selected academic publications relating to this research:
Lorini, M.R., Harindranath, G. and Unwin, T. (2025) Responsible Digital: Co-Creating Safe, Wise and Secure Digital Interventions with Vulnerable Groups, Information Systems Frontiers, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10796-025-10611-4
Harindranath, G., Unwin, T., Lorini, M.R. (2024). The Design and Use of Digital Technologies in the Context of South–South Migration, in: Crawley, H. and Teye, J.K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of South–South Migration and Inequality, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39814-8_23
Harindranath, G. , Unwin, T. and Lorini, M.R. (2023) Rethinking digital tech policy for (and with) migrants, Chapter 8 in: UNRISD (United Nations Research Institute for Social Development) and MIDEQ (Migration for Development and Equality) Migration and Inequality in the Global South: Evidence from the MIDEQ Hub, Geneva: UNRISD, 36-40.
Harindranath, G. and Unwin, T. (2022) Digital technologies, migration and the SDG agenda, in: Piper, N. and Ditta, K. (eds) Elgar Companion to Migration and the SDGs, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar (in press)
Unwin, T., Marcelin, L.H., de Souza e Silva, J., Otero, G., Lorini, M.R., Anyadi, C., Gonçalves, D.M., Sato, D.P. and Harindranath, G. (2022) Uses of digital technologies by migrants from Haiti and to Brazil, Egham: UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, Royal Holloway, University of London, Working Papers No.4.
Majidi, N., Kasavan, C. & Harindranath, G. (2021) In support of return and reintegration? A roadmap for a responsible use of technology, in: McAuliffe, M. (ed.) Research Handbook on International Migration and Digital Technology, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 220-236.
Unwin, T., Ghimire, A., Yeoh, S-G., New, S.S., Kishna, S.S., Gois, W., Lorini, M.R. and Harindranath, G. (2021) Uses of digital technologies by Nepali migrants in Malaysia, Egham: UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, Royal Holloway, University of London, Working Papers No.1.
Harindranath, G. and Unwin, T (2019), Digital technologies and migration: Reducing inequalities or creating new ones?, TREO Talk, International Conference on Information Systems, 15th December, Munich, Germany.
Harindranath, G. (2019) Digital technologies, migration and inequality, Presentation, Copenhagen Business School-Royal Holloway School of Management Joint Workshop, 16th September, Royal Holloway, UK.
To find out more about our work, do get in touch through our Contact Page.
We have been working since 2020 with partners across the world to develop basic cybersecurity resources for migrants, especially in Nepal and South Africa (funded by UKRI GCRF) , and have more recently extended this work to other countries (with funding from ESRC Social Impact Accelerator, Reseaerch England ODA, and Social Purpose Funding throigh Royal Holloway University of London). One of the most exciting of these new initiatives has be the collaboration between G. “Hari” Harindranath and Tim Unwin from the ICT4D Collective, and Dr. Heloisa Meloni in Brazil. This has focused mainly on developing localised versions of our basic training materials originally developed in Nepal into Brazilian Portuguese, focusing especially on advice that would be useful to those living nas periferias and in the favelas.
These resources were originally launched at a workshop on 12th September 2024 at the Casa Resistências in Maré, Rio de Janeiro, with a specific focus on how they could be used by the LBT community living there. Since then, the basic slide deck been subdivided into 16 short video clips by J Lo and Heloisa Melino and these can be shared on social media or used in many other ways to disseminate the advice on safe, wise and secure use of digital tech, especially for the LBT communities living in Brazil’s favelas. Some additional material is also included in clips 12-16 on topics such as deepfakes and using digital tech in violent contexts. Click on the links below to watch and listen to the videos:
We very much hope that these are helpful in many more Portuguese speaking contexts than just that for which they were original designed. They are made available under a Creatoive Commons BY SA license so they are free to use and adapt providing that new versions continue to be made available using the same license and appropriate credit is given.
Building on our research-practice in the MIDEQ Hub, funded by the UKRI GCRF, between 2019 and 2024, we have been working with colleagues in Brazil during 2024 to reversion and develop resources on the safe, wise and secure use of digital technologies. These were originally created with migrants and migrant organisations in Nepal and South Africa, but discussions with Dr. Heloisa Melino in Rio de Janeiro in September 2023 suggested that they could also be useful for those living nas periferias of Brazil. Subsequent funding from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through its Social Science Impact Accelerator at Royal Holloway, University of London, enabled us to put this into action, and following design workshops in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in April 2024, a series of new resources were developed in formats that would be appealing, especially for the LBT community in Maré.
These resources were launched on 12th September at the Casa Resistências in Maré, Rio de Janeiro. This was a vibrant occasion and provided important validation both of the value of these resources, and of their significance especially for the LBT community. Huge thanks are due to our friend and colleague, Heloisa Melino, for all the work that she did in co-ordinating and delivering this inspirational event (see images below).
Participants in the launch workshop were eager to express their views about the value and importance of these materials, and created these inspiring videos (in Portuguese):
For more information about this research-practice do click in the links below:
During one of our research visits to South Africa in January 2024 it became abundantly clear that many small and poorly resourced civil society organisations have little experience of using digital tech safely, wisely and securely. Drawing on good practices across the world, as well as our subsequent experiences in and with colleagues from Brazil, Nepal and Mozambiaue, we have therefore produced a short (12 page) guide to help such organisations understand the risks they are at from the use of digital tech and how they can be mitigated. This contains useful tips, graphics that can be copied and reversioned into posters, as well as links to more detailed sourcers of information, and it is freely available in English under a Creative Commons CC BY SA license.
Please get in touch using our contact page should you have any comments on how this could be improved or to discuss developing versions in other languages or for other contexts, and do please share information about this resource through your own networks.
Hari Harindranath, Maria Rosa Lorini and Tim Unwin from the ICT4D Collective (and Work Package 9 of MIDEQ), together with Guilia Casentini from SOAS (and Work Packages 1 and 3 of MIDEQ), convened a working session at the MIDEQ Symposium held in Rio de Janeiro on 21st September on “What works for migrants”. This focused especially on the ways through which members of the UKRI GCRF funded MIDEQ Hub have worked with (rather than “on” or “for”) migrants in the 12 countries where we have been working since 2019. It also addressed how we have sought to understand what migrants themselves have thought about our research-practice, and the monitoring and evaluation mechanisms we have used.
The workshop addressed four main themes:
How do we really know what migrants think about our work? (led by Maria Rosa Lorini)
What have we found to be effective ways of gathering empirical evidence about outcomes experienced by migrants? (led by Hari Harindranath)
What have we found to be effective ways of disseminating our outputs so that migrants benefit from them? (led by Giulia Casentini)
What are good forms of “output”/intervention to improve migrant lives? (led by Tim Unwin)
The enthusiastic group of researchers shown above from many different countries contributed to a very lively discussion that generated the mind map below (click on image for larger .pdf file).
We hope that this may become a useful tool for others wishing to undertake research-practice that aims positively to enhance the lives of migrants.
Members of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D are leading Work Package 9 of the MIDEQ hub (funded by UKRI GCRF and Royal Holloway, University of London) and are exploring how digital tech can be used to reduce the inequalities associated with migration, especially in four corridors: Nepal-Malaysia, Ethiopia-South Africa, China-Ghana, and Haiti-Brazil. The fourth of our working papers presenting data on the Uses of digital technologies by migrants from Haiti and to Brazil has just been published within the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D’s publication series. Key findings and abstract are as follows.
Key findings
1.Context matters: groups of migrants from different countries and backgrounds use digital tech in varying ways and for different purposes. There is no such thing as one size fits all.
2.Many migrants aspire to use digfital tech for educational and employment purpose – yet these are things that digital tech could already be readily used for if they knew how.
3.Most migrants focused on the use of digital tech for increasing economic well-being – none specifically addressed their potential for reducing inequalities.
Abstract
This working paper is the fourth in the series produced as part of the output of Work Package 9 on technology, inequality and migration within the MIDEQ Hub, a multi-disciplinary research project in 12 countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia, including the Haiti-Brazil migration corridor. It presents the results of three iterations of an online survey totalling 372 respondents most currently living in Brazil, and mainly from Haiti; 92.7% of those who reported their status identified themselves as migrants, with the remainder being family members of migrants (5.5%) or returned migrants (1.8%). Following a summary of the methodology, which explains the impact of COVID-19 on our research practice and why an online survey was used to replace our originally planned interviews and focus groups, the paper provides an overview of the most important results and an exploratory data analysis, focusing on the potential influence of age, gender, countries of origin, migration status, and occupational status on the ways in which respondents use digital technologies and for what purposes. Three important conclusions for the subsequent stages of our research on the inequalities associated with migration and how digital tech may be used to reduce these are: first, the migrants responding to this survey are from very different backgrounds, and these differences have a strong influence on their use of digital tech; second, many migrants aspire to use digital tech for purposes that they could readily do if they knew how; and third, none of the migrants specifically identified inequality or equity as issues that they would like to use digital tech to address.
To read this paper in full (v.4 .pdf) please use this link.
Other UNESCO Chair in ICT4D Publications are available here.
ICT4D Collective 
