Martijn de Waal (1972) is a writer and researcher focussing on the relation between digital media and urban culture, with a specific interest in public space.
He is currently working as a professor (lector) at the Lectorate of Play and Civic Media at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and the head of research for the faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries at that university.
Formerly he worked as an assistant professor in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and holds a PhD (2012) from the University of Groningen, where he was a member of the research group of practical philosophy, and the digital media & urban public space programme. In 2009 he spent a semester as a visiting scholar at the M.I.T. Center for Civic Media.
With Michiel de Lange, in 2007 he founded TheMobileCity.nl, an international think tank and research network on New Media and Urban Culture. Over the last few years they have organized a variety of conferences and workshops, in amongst other Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Some of his recent activities and research projects include The Hackable City, a research project on collaborative citymaking in the Network Society, and Design & The City, a four day event he curated on citizen-centered design approaches for the smart city.
In the past he has worked as a journalist for a broad variety of Dutch media such as de Volkskrant and VPRO Radio, served as a member of the board of the Dutch Media Fund and organized various workshops on digital media and interactive storytelling. He also contributed to Neville Mars study The Chinese Dream with a travelogue.
Publications:
De Platformsamenleving (The Platform Society), November 2016 , co-authored with Jose van Dijck and Thomas Poell
The City as Interface (Rotterdam: Nai010 Publishers), 2014
Other key articles include Owning the city: New media and citizen engagement in urban design (co-authored with Michiel de Lange) and The Ideas and Ideals in Urban Media Theory (published in Foth. et. al. From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen, Cambridge: MIT Press 2012).
