Annette Markham is currently the Chair Professor of Media Literacies and Public Engagement in the department of Media and Culture at Utrecht University, Netherlands. She researches the lived experience of datafication and digitalization, through the lens of digital ethnography, interpretive sociology, and symbolic interactionism. Markham’s work in ethics and research design focuses on developing intuitive and intuitive conceptual frameworks for research ethics that go beyond regulatory models to consider impact accountabilities, and 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, citizen social science, digital and data literacy through critical pedagogy, and digital ethnography. Annette holds a PhD in organizational theory (Purdue University, 1997), with special emphasis on interpretive qualitative methods.

Annette is founder and director of the Futures + Literacies Lab at Utrecht University (2025- ), and founding director of the Skagen Institute, an international consortium of fellows 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 (2020-2023), former Professor MSO leading the Danish Research Foundation project on Creating Future Heritages at Aarhus University, 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 regularly hosts post-graduate workshops, an annual Skagen Institute, PhD summer schools, and special interest seminars and symposia in the area of digital culture, ethical decision making in automated and algorithmic society, citizen social science research methods, and participatory models for scholarly activism. 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