Academic staff

Dr Michiel de Lange (Programme Coordinator)
is Assistant Professor in New Media Studies, and co-founder of , a platform for the study of new media and urbanism. His interests lay in the field of (mobile) media, urban culture, identity and play. His current research includes the NWO project , about the ways digital media shape the future of city making.
Dr Dennis Nguyen (Programme Coordinator)
Dennis Nguyen is Assistant Professor for Digital Literacy and Digital Methods at the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ��. His current research investigates the framing of data-driven technologies in public discourses, data ecologies, differences between digital cultures, and the role of critical data literacy in the digital society.
Dr Karin van Es
Karin van Es is Assistant Professor of Television & Digital Culture at Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ�� and a Senior Researcher at the Utrecht Data School. Her current research focuses on the challenges of the digital context to traditional television.
Dr Anne Kustritz
Anne Kustritz is an Assistant Professor in Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ��. Her teaching focuses on convergence, cultural studies, and new media ethnography. Her scholarship focuses on fan communities, transformative works, digital economies, and representational politics.
Prof. Bruce Mutsvairo
Bruce Mutsvairo is Full Professor in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ��. He has led multiple research and teaching teams across the interdisciplinary field of media and communication studies, publishing extensively in the area of his primary expertise: journalism studies.
Prof. Payal Arora
Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ�� and co-founder of Inclusive AI Lab, a Global South driven tech initiative and , a feminist futures of work initiative. She is a leading digital anthropologist with two decades of user experiences in the Global South to help shape inclusive AI enabled designs and policies.
Dr René Glas
is Assistant Professor in New Media and Game Studies. He teaches and writes about game culture and history, fan and participatory culture, deviant play, serious/pervasive games, and media comparison. Glas is a founding member of Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ��’s .
Dr Imar de Vries
Imar de Vries is Assistant Professor at the Department of Media and Culture where he teaches media archaeology and semiotics of communication. Imar studies innovation discourses of wireless technologies, social media, and augmented reality from a media-archaeological perspective.
Dr Jasper van Vught
Jasper van Vught is an Assistant Professor in the department of Media and Culture Studies at the Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ��. His research interests include game theory and methodology, game ethics, game history, games and narratology, film studies, and digital media theory.
Dr Maxigas Dunajcsik
Maxigas Dunajcsik is Assistant Professor of Computational Methods for Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ�� and co-Principal Investigator with the critical infrastructure lab. His research interest is how infrastructural ideologies translate to digital materialities, which he currently explores through studying standards and protocols related to programmable infrastructures such as 5G networks.
Dr Stefan Werning
is Associate Professor in new media and game studies. His research focuses on digital game studies, popular media culture and the implications of economic transformations on media use.
Dr Anne Helmond
Anne Helmond is Associate Professor of Media, Data & Society at Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ��. Together with with Prof. José van Dijck, she co-directs the focus area ‘Governing the Digital Society,’ which investigates platformization, algorithmization, and datafication—their societal impact and the governance of digital technologies.
Dr Donya Alinejad
Donya Alinejad is Assistant Professor and does research on the role of digital media in society and culture. Her work has focused on social media's influence on people's experiences of spatial mobility, community formation, emotional care, and scientific knowledge communication. She is interested in theories of (digital) mediation and methods for researching the role of social media platforms in society, especially in relation to power and how it operates in the relationship between technologies and their users. Her work has earned her the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Eary Career Award.
Prof. Joost Raessens
Joost Raessens holds the chair of Media Theory at Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ��. His research concerns the ‘ludification of culture,’ focusing in particular on persuasive, serious, or applied gaming (in relation to global issues such as climate change, refugees/migration), on the playful construction of identities, and on the notion of play as a conceptual framework for the analysis of media use. Raessens is book series editor of Games and Play (Amsterdam ľ�ϸ��Ӱ�� Press) and editorial board member of Games and Culture (SAGE).
Dr Fabian Ferrari
Fabian Ferrari is an Assistant Professor in Cultural AI, a member of the focus area Governing the Digital Society, and an affiliate at the . He holds a PhD from the ľ�ϸ��Ӱ�� of Oxford and an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Dr Niels Kerssens
Niels Kerssens is Assistant Professor in Media Studies and is researcher and lecturer at the department of Media and Cultural Studies at Utrecht ľ�ϸ��Ӱ��. His current research is part of the field of critical data studies and investigates contemporary big data phenomena through historical methods.
Dr Ingrid Hoofd
is Assistant Professor in Media and Culture Studies. Her research focuses on, among others, the contemporary relationship between new media activism and online politics, the aesthetics of new technologies, the transformation of higher education, and neo-liberal globalisation, from a critical and feminist perspective.