People

Peter Knight (Principal Investigator) - Professor of American Studies, University of Manchester

Peter Knight is a professor of American Studies at the University of Manchester, and currently visiting professor at Leiden University. He is the Principal Investigator on the Infodemic project, and directed the COMPACT network of conspiracy theory researchers. He is the author of Conspiracy Culture (2000), The Kennedy Assassination (2007) and Reading the Market (2016), and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories (2020).

Clare Birchall (Co-Investigator) - Reader in Contemporary Culture, Department of English, King’s College London

Clare Birchall is the author of Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip, Shareveillance: The Dangers of Openly Sharing or Covertly Collecting Data, and the forthcoming Radical Secrecy: The Ends of Transparency in Datafied America. Her research centres on forms of “popular knowledge”, digital culture, secrecy, surveillance, and transparency. She will be writing a book with Peter Knight based on the Infodemic research on Covid-19 conspiracy theories.

Liliana Bounegru (Co-Investigator) - Lecturer in Digital Methods, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London

Liliana Bounegru is Lecturer in Digital Methods at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. She is also co-founder of the Public Data Lab and affiliated with the Digital Methods Initiative in Amsterdam and the médialab, Sciences Po in Paris.

Jonathan Gray (Co-Investigator) - Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London

Jonathan Gray is Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, where he is currently writing a book on data worlds. He is also Cofounder of the Public Data Lab; and Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam) and the médialab (Sciences Po, Paris).

Marc Tuters (Co-Investigator) - Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam

Marc Tuters is Assistant Professor at the Media Studies Department, University of Amsterdam. His work explores radical political subcultures online, including with “digital methods” in affiliation with researchers at the Open Intelligence Lab and the Digital Methods Initiative. He has given recent talks on new-right “conspiracism” and “the deep vernacular web” at De Balie (Amsterdam, NL), the IMPAKT festival (Utrecht, NL) and the Centre for Investigative Journalism (London, UK).

Gabriele Colombo – Research Fellow at DensityDesign Research Lab, Politecnico di Milano

Gabriele Colombo is Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor at DensityDesign Research Lab, Politecnico di Milano. He is also a postdoctoral researcher in the European research project INCOMMON, hosted by IUAV, University of Venice, and Research Associate at the Visual Methodologies Collective at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

Emillie de Keulenaar - PhD researcher at the Digital Democracies (Simon Fraser University) and Open Intelligence Labs (University of Amsterdam)

Emillie de Keulenaar’s research focuses on the role of deep disagreements in the production of misinformation, as well as the history of moderating hate speech and other problematic information.

Ivan Kisjes – Programmer on CREATE project, University of Amsterdam

Ivan Kisjes studied archaeology at the University of Leiden. Currently he is working as a programmer in the CREATE project at the University of Amsterdam, processing and analysing datasets from many disciplines in the humanities. He is also involved in the Amsterdam and European Time Machine projects and supports research at the Open Intelligence Labs.

Thais Lobo - MA candidate in Digital Humanities at King’s College London

Thais Lobo is an MA candidate and research/teaching assistant at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. Her research interests are on the use of digital methods to explore the circulation of problematic content. She has a background as a multimedia journalist in Brazilian news outlets.

Eleni Maragkou – MA candidate in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Eleni Maragkou is a research master’s student at the University of Amsterdam, specializing in new media and digital culture, and an intern at the Institute of Network Cultures. Her research interests lie at the intersection of media, cultural, and platform studies, with a particular focus on online subcultures, algorithmic inequality, gender, and the platformization of cultural production.

Sean O’Brien - Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Birkbeck

Sean O’Brien is a research assistant for the Infodemic Project. Beyond the project, his work focuses on precarity and postwar American literature and cinema. He has been published in Cultural Critique, Discourse, Science Fiction Studies, Crossings, and The Bloomsbury Companion to Marx.

Richard Rogers - University Professor and Chair in New Media & Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam

Richard Rogers is University Professor and holds the Chair in New Media & Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. He is also Director of the Govcom.org Foundation (Amsterdam) and the Digital Methods Initiative.

Tommaso Venturini – Researcher at CNRS Centre for Internet and Society

Tommaso Venturini is researcher at the CNRS Centre for Internet and Society. He is also associate researcher of the médialab of Sciences Po Paris and founding member of the Public Data Lab.

Fabio Votta - PhD researcher at the Information, Communication & The Data Society (ICDS) research initiative (University of Amsterdam)

Fabio Votta’s research focuses on studying algorithms, social media platforms and the communication of extremist and misinformation actors online. A social scientist by training and a passionate programmer, he seeks to address research questions at the intersection of the computational and social sciences.

Esther Weltevrede – Assistant Professor in New Media & Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam

Esther Weltevrede is an assistant professor in New Media & Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. She is a founding member of the Digital Methods Initiative and the App Studies Initiative and an affiliated researcher with the Digital Democracies Institute.