Bio

Bio

Annette Markham is a digital ethnographer and public engagement specialist focused on building critical awareness among various publics around the current and future impacts of datafication, algorithmic personalization, and AI. As a Professor of Media, Literacies, and Public Engagement in the department of Media and Culture at Utrecht University, Netherlands, she engages in studies of how everyday ideas about digital technologies get stuck in Big Tech logics and corporatized narratives. She is well known for her innovative approaches for getting people interested in studying their own lived experiences with digital devices and emerging tech. Her research approaches combine participatory action research, digital ethnography, grounded theory, and symbolic interactionism. Markham's globally respected work in ethics and research design focuses on developing mindful and innovative conceptual frameworks for research ethics that go beyond regulatory models to consider impact accountabilities. She is lead author of the 2012 AoIR Ethics guidelines (Association of Internet Researchers). She is also well known and writes broadly about research methodologies, particularly in her work to describe ethics as fundamentally a matter of method, as well as her work on the politics, ethics, and practices of online and digital ethnography. Methods specializations include guided digital autoethnography, critical pedagogy, arts-based interventions, participatory action research, citizen social science, workshopping as public activation, and digital and data literacy through critical pedagogy. 

With her Chair at Utrecht University, Annette focuses on frameworks and tools for opening up possibilities for futuremaking through different types of workshop based critical pedagogy. Her workshops generally involve speculative design thinking techniques to foster self-guided social science among citizens. As founder and PI of the Futures+ Literacies + Methods Lab (FLL), Markham is collaborating with Utrecht University's Center for Digital Humanities, the Inclusive AI Lab, the Generative AI in higher education special interest group, and the Governing Digital Society platform. She sits on the scientific board for the International Digital Futures Network and is a Chair of Becoming Adult in a Changing World within Utrecht University's strategic theme: Dynamics of Youth.

In addition to building the Futures + Literacies Lab at Utrecht University (2025- ), Annette continues to direct the international Skagen Institute, an consortium of fellows founded in 2014 that hosts an annual Conference on Transgressive Methods. Prior to moving to Utrecht University in the Netherlands in 2024, Annette was Professor and Director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University in Australia (2020-2023), former Professor MSO leading the Danish Research Foundation project on Creating Future Heritages at Aarhus University in Denmark (2016-2020), featuring the Museum of Random Memory, co-founder and -director of Aarhus University's international Masters degree program in Digital Living (2013-2020), and former co-founder/co-director of Aarhus University's Digital Living Research Centre. In 2014, she created and directed the Future Making Research Consortium, an international collaboratory that brought together scholars, artists, and activists, particularly early career researchers, to study the intersection of digital technology, ways of being in the world, and future possible meanings, practices, and social structures. She has worked in the public and private sectors, and has also held invited research fellowships at such institutions as Microsoft Research Labs, New England (2015), Tallinn University (2022), Umeå University (2012-2014), Oslo Architecture and Design School (2016-18), Centre for Sociodigital Futures and Bristol Digital Futures Institute (2026-27), and University of Bergen (2020).

Markham is well-known for designing and facilitating PhD Summer Schools, workshops, and short interdisciplinary intensive training courses in the areas of digital ethics, digital identity, and research methods, across disciplines such as anthropology, architecture, arts management, communication studies, data science, design, digital culture, digital humanities, education, gender studies, informatics, information studies, linguistics, media studies, social psychology, and social science. Her writing can be found in a range of international journals, books, and edited collections. Annette holds an honorary adjunct professor position at RMIT University (Media and Communication). See various publications, note recent or upcoming talks, or see Annette Markham's full CV

To contact Annette directly, please send email to amarkham {at] gmail [dot} com

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