Seminar: Turning to Trust Experience Design with Helena Rong (Metagov's Newest Research Director)
Please note this seminar will take place at a different (more Asia-friendly) time**
Join us for a Metagov Seminar with Metagov's newest research director, Dr. Helena Rong. Helena is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media and Business at NYU Shanghai, with an interdisciplinary focus on urban technology, collective intelligence, and digital governance. Her work examines how emerging technologies (blockchains, decentralized AI, urban IoT) can transform collective life and foster new forms of civic trust. She leads research on Trust Experience Design (TXD), intentional communities and digital nomadism, and the institutional challenges posed by the emerging agentic web. Across her projects, she explores how sociotechnical systems can enable more resilient, participatory, and imaginative modes of urban living.
In her seminar presentation, she will share about her work with a focus around "Turning to Trust Experience Design (TXD): A Manifesto for the Future of Distributed Autonomous Intelligence in the Wild. Helena has previously worked with Metagov RDs on Open Problems in DAOs and the State of DAOs in China report. She has also co-authored the recently published, "The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds."
Previously, Helena conducted research at MIT’s Real Estate Innovation Lab (co-authoring the book Value of Design: Creating Agency Through Data-Driven Insights, 2025) and at the MIT Senseable City Lab, working on autonomous urban systems (“roboat” waterborne vehicles for public spaces). As a 2022–23 Technology and Public Purpose Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, she studied decentralized trust-building frameworks and tech policy.
We are so thrilled to welcome Helena to the Metagov Research Community!
More about Metagov Seminar: The Metagov Seminar invites individuals working in online governance to present their work to a community of other researchers and practitioners. Seminar topics include, but are not limited to, computational tools for governance, governance incidents and case studies from online communities, topics in cryptoeconomics, and the design of digital constitutions.
The seminar is intended for researchers and practitioners in online governance, broadly defined. We welcome guests and curious members of the public. Note that the discussion is moderated.