Martijn de Waal

Martijn de Waal

Martijn de Waal is a Lector (professor) leading the research group of Civic Interaction Design. He has a background in journalism, media studies and practical philosophy, and is now exploring the connection between these disciplines and the field of design.

Martijn holds a PhD from the University of Groningen, he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam where he taught in Media Studies and the MA Journalism-program. In 2009 he spent a semester as a visiting scholar at the M.I.T. Center for Civic Media. He holds MA degrees  in Media Studies and Cultural Studies from the University of Amsterdam, and through an exchange program followed part of his MA-education at University of California Berkeley.

His research focus is on the relation between digital media and public space, with a specific interest in civic media and digital placemaking. Key publications include The Platform Society (Oxford University Press, 2019), with José van Dijck and Thomas Poell), The Hackable City (Springer, 2019), co-edited with Michiel de Lange and The City as Interface (NAi010 Publishers, 2014).

He is the general chair for the Media Architecture Biennale 2020. From 2018-2020 he served as the chair of the Digital Culture committee at the Creative Industries Fund NL, and from 2008 to 2013 he served as a member of the board at the Dutch Fund for Cultural Broadcasting. He co-founded The Mobile City, a non-profit that since 2007 has organized numerous workshops and events on digital media and urban culture, and also co-founded DeNieuweReporter.nl in 2005, a leading Dutch blog on the future of journalism.