The PhD workshop MACHINE RESEARCH, organized by transmediale, Aarhus University, and  Constant – Association for Arts and Media, took place from 24 to 26 October 2016 in Brussels. Its thematic focus responded to the 2017 festival edition of transmediale, ever elusive, which focused on the elusive character of media and technological change and tried to develop more nuanced perspectives on the nonhuman. The workshop aimed at engaging research and artistic practices that take into account the new materialist conditions implied by nonhuman techno-ecologies – including new ontologies of learning and intelligence (such as algorithmic learning), socio-economic organization (such as blockchain), population management and tracking (such as datafied borders), autonomous or semi-autonomous systems (such as bots or drones) and other post-anthropocentric reconsiderations of agency, materiality, and autonomy.