New CDH affiliated member: Annette Markham
The Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH) team is proud to welcome dr. Annette Markham as an affiliated member. She is Chair Professor of Media Literacies and Public Engagement at the Department of Media & Culture Studies at Utrecht University (UU), Principal Investigator (PI) of the Futures + Literacies + Methods Lab, member of the strategic theme Dynamics of Youth, and part of the Higher Education Research community of professors at UU’s Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning.
Research
Annette Markham is well known for her research on the sociality of human-machine interactions drawing on symbolic interactionism and rhetorical studies combined with digital ethnography. Since 2012, Markham has focused more narrowly on critical data and algorithmic literacies, building frameworks and creative practices for generating ethical digital futures through publicly engaged critical pedagogy. As a methodologist, she has broad interdisciplinary training and expertise that blends humanities, social science, and design approaches.
As founder and PI of the Futures+ Literacies + Methods Lab, Markham is fostering participatory engagement practices and community engaged learning to build capacity around tools for ethical and critical AI literacies. The aim of these practices is especially to explore the power, potential, and ethical dilemmas of AI in everyday internet and digital media usage.
Teaching
At UU, Markham is involved in several study programmes and courses, recently co-coordinating and teaching New Digital Media Theories; Play, Perform, Participate; Gender Now; Workshop in Audiovisual Media; Social Innovation, and Digital Ethnography.
Markham’s expertise includes designing and facilitating PhD training through interdisciplinary summer schools. Since 2011, she has focused these courses on digital ethics, autoethnography, digital ethnography, visual ethnography, data cultures, and algorithmic identity. She has taught 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, social sciences, and sociology.
Relevant DH publications
Annette Markham has been involved in several interesting digital humanities (DH) studies. You can find an overview of all her publications on annettemarkham.com. The following three relevant DH publications give an indication of her research:
- Markham, A. (2024). Algorithms as conversational partners: Looking at Google auto-predict through the lens of symbolic interaction. New Media & Society, 26(9), 5059-5080. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241251800
- Pronzato, R., & Markham, A. N. (2023). Returning to critical pedagogy in a world of datafication. Convergence, 29(1), 97-115. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221148108
- Markham, A. (2020). The limits of the imaginary: Challenges to intervening in future speculations of memory, data, and algorithms. New Media & Society, 23(2), 382-405. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820929322
Markham’s full CV, informal blogposts, and a list of upcoming speaking engagements can also be found on her website.