Lumina House

Nothing like building with ambitious women. We placed 2nd on a hackathon in Oxford organised by Lumina House. Who’s really funding politicians and your favourite newspapers? Most people have no idea, and that’s not an accident.🫢 Our aim was to provide clarity and transparency about policy and the real beneficiaries behind it. What if you had a browser extension that tells you who’s funding politicians, parties and news sources? What if you could map in 3D the hidden networks driving media, politics, and business by connecting the dots between business ownership, party funding and informal networks leaked by investigative journalists and whistleblowers? Even though a LOT is available to the public, all this information is hidden in government databases/thousands of pages of documents that people rarely find or read. We built a tool, Lattice that: 1. tells you in plain language how policies and bills affect you personally based on your demographics 2. exposes hidden networks by connecting available data about lobbying, party funding, leaked documents and business ownership structures providing the level of transparency we never had This is how data should unlock real democracy. Thank you, team: Tatiana Pridchenko Tuesday D. Luyanda M. & Anaïs S.

I spent a Saturday building something I genuinely cared about — and I didn’t expect how much that would change the entire experience. Last weekend I joined an all-female hackathon organised by Lumina House and Oxford Edge. Our team — Sara M., Sekere Pepa, Giang Pham, and I — built a partnership engine that matches brands with aspiring female athletes looking for sponsorships. A startup describes their audience, the platform finds the right athlete match, and generates a ready-to-send proposal. End-to-end. The hard part wasn’t the tech. It was making quick decisions with people you met only hours before — finding a shared vision, dividing up the work, and trusting each other’s instincts under real pressure. Somehow, it just worked. What surprised me most was the atmosphere in the room. Every team came from completely different backgrounds, yet the energy felt the same everywhere: focused, generous, and genuinely excited about what they were making. Our mentors Victoria Porritt and Paul Sheedy had this quiet gift for showing up with exactly the right nudge at exactly the right moment. A huge thank you to Sara M. for bringing this opportunity to my attention in the first place — and to the people who helped us understand what we were actually building. Melanie Preen took the time to share her experience as an aspiring athlete, and hearing directly from someone living this problem made all the difference. It helped us build something that actually made sense, not just something that looked good on a slide. My biggest takeaway: the best collaboration happens when everyone in the room actually wants the thing they’re building to exist. #WomenInTech #Hackathon #WomenInSport

First place at the Oxford Edge x Lumina House Hackathon! 🥇 I am anaemic, and it's a condition that is incredibly common among women. In fact, anaemia affects nearly 1 in 3 women of reproductive age worldwide. My team and I designed a pair of earrings that utilise ZPP (Zinc Protoporphyrin) technology. Who would have known that low iron levels actually cause the body to emit a fluorescent light :) The wearable device tracks daily iron levels, monitors how menstruation affects those levels, and offers personalised dietary and lifestyle suggestions via the software platform. We designed and built the entire concept in just 9 hours alongside my amazing teammates:Amélie Romano, Alison Izzdin ,Kanz Majdalawi and Anastasia! 👩💻 A huge thank you to the organisers, Clara, Moneli, and Melanie to the mentors Victoria Porritt, Martin Johnson, Paul Sheedy and to the judges Alexandria Procter, Peter Mulley, Chris Dryden, Naziha S., Nick Sopuch.

Ahead of Oxford Tech Week, Lumina House hosted a hackathon in Oxford! Our team spent the day brainstorming, building, and refining ShadowPay. With the help of Lovable, we brought our idea to life as a website and then presented it to a panel of judges. This was an all-women hackathon, and it was genuinely inspiring to be surrounded by so many women turning ideas into real products.The selection process was highly competitive, and that showed in every team’s work. I learned so much from the process, from collaborating with my team Miyu Tone Dasha Mashate to hearing feedback from the mentors Paul Sheedy Martin Johnson and judges Chris Dryden Peter Mulley Alexandria Procter Nick Sopuch Naziha S. A huge thank you to everyone who made the event so special! Loved being part of such a powerful day, and I hope to keep building on ShadowPay from here. 💜 #LuminaHouse #Hackathon #WomenInTech #ProductBuilding #Startups #Lovable #ShadowPay #WomenWhoBuild #Innovation

STILL PROCESSING THIS ONE… A weekend at Oxford, complete strangers, nonstop building, big ideas… and somehow we ended up placing 3rd at the University of Oxford x Lumina House Huge shoutout to my amazing team Daria Konstantinova Juliana C. and Naveed Dogar couldn’t have asked for a better group to build this with. The energy, the people, the ideas, the chaos genuinely unforgettable. Huge thank you to Lumina House , Oxford Edge , Oxford Founders Society for making this possible and Lovable for sponsoring the event. #Hackathon #Oxford #AI #Innovation #Tech #StudentBuilders

Second place at an all-female hackathon in Oxford and I haven't shut up about it since 🙌 Lumina House and Oxford Edge organised it ahead of Oxford Tech Week. And the format was something I'd never seen before: a bingo board up on a screen 20 challenge cards from shadow pay gap auditing to manifesto tracking to peer review bias You pick your squares, you build, you pitch. We picked two: ⤷ Astroturf Detector — catching manufactured outrage on social media ⤷ Policy in Plain English — personalising legislation so normal humans can actually read what shapes their lives (yes both. no we don't do easy 🤌🏻) We wired them into one ecosystem with Lovable to build a pipeline from personal to collective: understand the laws that affect you ⤷ spot the campaigns manipulating your opinion about them ⤷ participate with clarity instead of noise The irony of our time, which I constantly observe as a UX & market researcher in my own studies, is that we have more AI tools than ever and somehow it's getting HARDER to track what actually affects our lives? Harder to tell real outrage from manufactured outrage? Harder to read the legislation that shapes our rights? Make it make sense. And that's a design choice someone deliberately made. But our team chose to design it differently. Your rights shouldn't need an interpreter and fake campaigns shouldn't be easier to build than to spot We came second, and I felt ever the moon 🚀 All pitches were insanely good!! Every single team delivered something real that can go into production tomorrow. But the part I keep replaying in my mind is building this with my team: Tuesday D. Annamária Wettstein Luyanda M. and Anaïs S. 💛 Thank you for being brave, creative, and inspiring!! We picked the hardest squares on the board and turned them into a working prototype in hours Wouldn't have wanted to do it with anyone else 🫶🏼

My first hackathon. And we placed 2nd 🏆 No safety net. No familiar team. Just a brief, a deadline, and five women who'd never worked together before. Within the first hour, we each stepped into our role without being asked. That kind of instant trust is rare. Together we built Lattice, a platform that turns information into power. Two products. One mission. Product 1: Policy in Plain English - Democracy shouldn't require a law degree. Paste any bill, get instant clarity on what it means and how it affects you. Product 2: Exposé Detector - Search a public figure and the app shows you their hidden affiliations, funding sources, and flagged contradictions in under a minute. Built in under 9 hours at the Lumina House Hackathon in Oxford, powered by Lovable. I'm walking away with something better: a group of sharp, driven, generous women I genuinely hope to know for a long time. Couldn't have done this without Annamária Wettstein Tatiana Pridchenko Luyanda M. and Anais. You made this one to remember. Thank you. Leadership isn't just what you do at work. Sometimes it's showing up somewhere unfamiliar and building something meaningful with people you've only just met. First hackathon. Definitely not the last. #WomenInTech #Leadership #Hackathon #Innovation #CivicTech