Innovative but Precarious: The Challenge of Running Open-Source Investigations Labs at Public Universities

[Alexa Koenig, PhD, MA, JD, is a research professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center, and director and co-founder of the center’s Investigations Lab.

Brianne McGonigle Leyh, PhD, MA, JD, is professor of global justice studies at Utrecht University’s School of Law, director of masters education at the School of Law, and project lead of the Global Justice Investigations Lab at Utrecht University]

Around the world, a growing number of universities are beginning to recognize the value of open-source investigation as a field of research and a means of education, training students how to effectively conduct research online and verify the authenticity and reliability of the information they discover. For example, the University of Essex’s Digital Verification Unit partners with Amnesty International—and more than a half dozen other university programs worldwide—to engage students in human rights investigations using digital techniques. In Canada, the University of Toronto’s interdisciplinary Citizen Lab investigates cyber espionage, disinformation, and digital rights violations. In the United States, Boston University launched the Justice Media Co-Lab, an interdisciplinary initiative that brings together students from law, journalism, and computer science to work on digital investigations with real-world implications. Similarly, the Human Rights Investigations Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz, trains students in open-source methods to support advocacy groups and international legal processes. These Labs, and many more like them, take different institutional forms. They may engage graduate or undergraduate students, or both, and may deploy open-source investigation skills for journalism or legal practice, or focus on the intersection of disciplines. Still, they share a common purpose: equipping students with practical skills to investigate power, amplify truth, and contribute to accountability in an increasingly digital world.

From our vantage points at Utrecht University and the University of California, Berkeley, we are witnessing a near-global wave of educational vision-setting that places interdisciplinarity, civic engagement, and digital competencies at the heart of academic aspirations. From strategic plans to glossy communications materials, universities declare their desire to be socially engaged, forward-looking, and committed to educating global citizens who will help shape a rights-respecting future.

Our respective Open-Source Investigations Labs—spaces where students and researchers collaboratively work across majors and disciplines on real-world issues using digital tools and public data—perfectly embody these values. They combine innovative teaching with impact-driven, hands-on research. They connect university classrooms to global struggles for justice. They train students not only to think critically, but to act meaningfully. They combat the dangers of disinformation for democracy, illuminate relevant ethical issues, and draw a non-traditional cohort into STEM-related activities. In short, they bring our universities’ aspirational strategies to life. And yet, these very same Labs exist on structurally precarious ground.

A Model That Doesn’t Fit the Mold

Despite aligning with our institutions’ stated ambitions, Open-Source Investigation Labs are a mis-fit for the operational and financial frameworks of our public universities. At Utrecht University, the Strategic Plan 2025 lays out a compelling vision: cross-disciplinary collaboration is essential to addressing global challenges; digital literacy and data competence must be core components of education; and societal engagement should be woven into curricula to help make the world more sustainable, just, and inclusive. Similarly, UC Berkeley’s strategic plan touts a commitment to “empowering engaged thinkers and global citizens to change our world; focusing on the good: innovative solutions for society’s great challenges; [and] embracing the California spirit: diverse, inclusive, entrepreneurial.”

In this context, both Labs seem tailor-made to advance their university’s mission. The programs build bridges between disciplines: anthropology, computer science, conflict studies, criminology, human rights, law, media and communication studies, journalism and international relations. They integrate societal partners, including NGOs, investigative reporters, and international institutions, into the learning experience. They offer students hands-on training in the most cutting-edge tools for open-source digital investigation and empower them with fact-checking methods that are increasingly essential for navigating today’s notoriously unreliable information landscape.

However, both Labs operate primarily on short-term, project-based external funding. We spend as much time securing financial resources as we do mentoring students or conducting investigations. While we are incredibly grateful for the short-term internal funding that we have received from our faculties and from different pockets within our universities, which has enabled us to sustain the Labs’ work for limited periods, there is no structural line item in our universities’ budgets for the Labs’ core activities, despite the fact that they serve as a clear embodiment of what both universities claim to prioritize.

Between the Ideal and the Infrastructure

At Utrecht, we are encouraged to pursue “community-engaged learning,” to experiment with “educational innovation,” and to act as “entrepreneurial researchers.” The University is a signatory to the Dutch Recognition and Rewards reform, which encourages valuing diverse academic careers, including those focused on teaching and societal impact. These are promising developments.

Nevertheless, we find ourselves in a recurring bind: our work is celebrated at the level of vision and strategy, but, after initial funding ends, is under supported in the mechanisms of implementation. Recognition is not the same as resourcing. Our Labs become showcases for institutional values and are appreciated by the broader university communities, and beloved by students, many of whom credit the Labs for providing a pipeline to professional practice, but the daily labor of running them is shouldered largely by a small group of dedicated (and often overextended) staff. For many of us, the Lab is a passion project before it is a structurally funded one.

This is not unique to the Netherlands. Our Berkeley colleagues face parallel constraints within the University of California system: high student demand, unstable funding streams, and administrative models that struggle to accommodate interdisciplinary, experiential learning. As in Utrecht, faculty find themselves balancing innovation with exhaustion. Exacerbating the constant and recurring stress of funding the labs, faculty at Berkeley are unable to receive credit for their teaching and mentorship in the Labs, meaning that the Lab becomes a labor of love that sits alongside their classroom teaching. The very multi-disciplinarity and cross-departmental engagement the university aspires to encourage is undermined by having different academic calendars for different schools within the university system (making it impossible to have a uniform start and end date for journalism and law students) and restrictions that prevent graduate/undergraduate engagement (such as rules that prohibit law students from taking classes alongside undergraduates).

The Business of Education

These tensions reveal a paradox at public research universities: a looming gap between visionary strategy and financial reality. Institutions like UU and UCB function increasingly like businesses, where cost-saving, student numbers, and bureaucratic legibility determine viability. Suppose a course, lab, or program does not conform to standard educational delivery models. In that case, if it is interdisciplinary, team-taught, or heavily reliant on external partnerships, it becomes difficult to justify within rigid administrative and budgetary systems.

At both our institutions, open-source investigation courses are labor-intensive and resource-hungry. They demand interdisciplinary teaching teams, dynamic collaboration with external experts, and the cultivation of sensitive, often justice-oriented partnerships. They do not scale easily. They do not fit well within existing workload models. And because they cut across departments and faculties, no single unit is eager, or able, to assume ownership.

Yet, the outcomes speak for themselves. Students leave our courses with skills in cutting-edge digital verification and online search methods, resiliency practices that help ensure sustainability in emotionally challenging work, and a sensitivity to the ethical challenges of working with digital data. They contribute to real-world investigations into war crimes, environmental harm, disinformation campaigns, and more. They reflect deeply on the role of knowledge in shaping justice. They scoop jobs from alums from more elite universities, securing positions usually reserved for professionals with years of experience, heading straight to positions that historically required graduate degrees or years of professional practice. They leave our universities not only educated, but empowered.

In times of financial abundance, universities are often willing to support innovative, interdisciplinary programs that align with their goals. But during periods of austerity, such as the severe budget cuts currently affecting Dutch higher education or the United States’ open hostility to university-based research—especially on human rights and humanitarian issues— these initiatives are among the first to lose funding. It doesn’t have to be this way. We believe there are more thoughtful and sustainable ways to safeguard such programs, even in lean times.

Persisting for Possibility

And still, we persist. Not because it is easy or sustainable, but because we see the transformative potential of this work. Because our students want more of it. Because our partners in civil society, journalism, and law recognize its value. Because in an era of digital manipulation, democratic erosion, and climate injustice, the university must remain a site of meaningful intervention providing students with the skills needed to navigate an increasingly diverse yet divided world.

We believe that Open-Source Investigation Labs can and should become part of the educational and research infrastructure of the public university. We believe they should scale nationally, regionally, and internationally. The demand is there. And we are prepared to share resources and lessons learned to support the “baby labs” that are increasingly being incubated in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. But making this vision possible requires more than visionary language. It requires rethinking funding models, recognizing non-traditional teaching formats, and institutionalizing structures and cultures that can support interdisciplinary, high-impact, student-centered work. 

We write this blog not to lament what is missing, but to begin a conversation among universities, funding organizations, and international institutions about how to chart a path forward. By making visible the often-invisible labor behind these Labs, and by sharing experiences across institutions, we hope to contribute to a broader conversation about how public universities can align their ambitions with their operations. This is a Big Bet, but one that has already been test-piloted with proof of concept. With educational opportunities increasingly being eroded, why not start planning now for what universities will look like in their next iteration—ideally a form that softens the disciplinary silos that hardened in the 19^th century, to better address the real-world, complex challenges of the 21st century?

For now, we will continue to spend an unsustainable amount of time seeking external funding both individually and together, setting up a network to support a growing, global consortium of open-source investigation labs. We will share resources across institutions, mentor faculty who are starting similar programs, conduct collaborative investigations, and develop joint online trainings. There’s plenty of work to be done! And while the work we do is complex, so too are the challenges we face in the world.

Our Labs don’t just teach open-source investigations, they demonstrate how universities can live up to their promise. Our students deserve nothing less. And the world desperately needs what our students can deliver.