ABOUT |RESEARCH | HvA | WHO IS WHO | INC THEMES

Institute of Network Cultures

The Institute of Network Cultures (INC) analyzes and shapes the terrain of network cultures through events, publications, and online dialogue. Our projects evolve around urgent publishing, alternative revenue models, critical design and making, digital counter culture and much more.

The INC was founded in 2004 by Geert Lovink, following his appointment at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). A key focus is the establishment of sustainable research networks. Emerging critical topics are identified and shaped in a practical sense. Interdisciplinary in character, the INC brings together researchers, artists, activists, programmers, designers, and students and teachers.

Research

The field of network cultures revolves around the interaction between new forms of media, and the users of such new forms. With a strong focus on the transdisciplinary nature of new media and its DIY and open-source components, the INC gives equal attention to the artistic, political and technical aspects of the internet and other emergent media. As such, the INC’s area of research extends to design, activism, art, philosophy, political theory, and urban studies and is not confined to the internet alone. Indeed, the INC maintains that the internet can only be understood at the conjuncture of these various fields and lines of inquiry. ‘Network cultures’ is seen as a strategic instrument to diagnose political and aesthetic developments in user-driven communication. Network cultures rapidly assemble, and can just as quickly disappear, creating a sense of spontaneity, transience, even uncertainty. Yet these forms are here to stay. However self-evident it is, collaboration is a foundation of network cultures.

Model of the INC method, via public research (e.g. conferences) and publications a sustainable network will be formed.

The aim of the INC is to create sustainable research networks around emerging topics in which a critical contribution can be made. The formation of a small group of international people, both inside and outside of the academy, may result in a larger online discussion. Together with the researchers and a group of students, interns and volunteers, an event is organized to gather key questions and thinkers. Many of these events, such as a conference, seminar or workshop, culminate in a publication. Formats of publication may include a printed reader, a book, video interviews, wikis, blogs and special online magazine issues, along with conference documentation (photos, video files and podcasts). The publication functions as an important vehicle for the sustainability of the research network.

All INC publications, including the blog postings,  are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0)

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INC themes

Image culture

These days images form part and parcel of every message when surfing, searching, and interacting. On dedicated platforms like YouTube and Pinterest images are gathered, annotated and shared. Images are more than just illustration: they have retained an autonomous status, digitalization notwithstanding. Online video has to observe its own rules with respect to editing, light, framing, use of sound, and so on. How has this been changed under the influence of digitalization and the ubiquity of digital cameras? What relationship should visual education have to this? And the key question: is the image taking over from the written word? Alongside the technical, economic, and social aspects of the network, its aesthetic component is becoming increasingly important. To understand this better we need to engage in an open, critical dialogue with visual artists, designers, and filmmakers at all levels of the network culture.

Urgent/hybrid/digital publishing

The publishing world is perhaps one of the last big media organizations to be making the transition to the digital domain. So it is now going through a sea-change moment in which new relationships will emerge between writer, publisher, designer and distributor. Many of its older mechanisms may soon no longer work, but in their place new possibilities will arise with regard to formats, reading experiences, social reading, do-it-yourself, business models, and so on. Is the book business – like other media industries – headed towards a model in which content is cut up into parts? What about e-readers and reading online, on your phone?

Revenue models in the arts/MoneyLab

More and more young professionals are entering the market and it is getting harder to find a solid job. Remuneration for web design and app development is falling all the time, while the content itself has been more or less written off and is made available for free. A freelancer’s life is an insecure one. In a moribund economy, finding new income sources is a matter of urgency. IT is getting ever more important, but outsourcing continues to expand. Online funding of the creative sector is still in its infancy and badly needs more research and development. What will future YouTube earnings models look like? Will crowdfunding and Bitcoins supply enough ‘supplementary income’? And where will the basic income come from?

Multidisciplinary engagement

Political action and social involvement are no longer isolated, underground activities, or limited to a small group of activists. People are experimenting with new media and digital technologies everywhere and all the time. Post-2000 a new relationship has arisen between politics and aesthetics, and the technical knowledge needed to effectively deploy new media has spread quickly. Today, ‘compassion fatigue and nihilism are the greatest problems; where do we draw the line between ‘clicktivism’ and real involvement? Is going offline the only option? How can social movements organize themselves, beyond social media? We are in the middle of a quest to find the right balance between virtuality and the street, between networks and squares, as public spaces used to be called in the old days. What do the newest tactics look like to today’s social mix of artists, programmers, researchers, and designers?

Design

Design is more than just the optimization of business processes and information streams. For INC, design is above all an aesthetic expression that asks questions. Design is a skill and an applied art that is essential to anyone building systems for the media and information industries. Without a solid knowledge of visual language, and a critical attitude towards form and functionality, designers end up simply copying standard protocols: the filling in of empty templates. A world without aesthetic practice is a bleak and barren environment, dominated by a pure functionality in which the spirits of both the maker and the user are absent. In design education, it is essential that links are forged between functional informatics and interaction design, not just for students but for everyone who goes online. How do we break out of this ‘urge to optimize’?

Knowledge production

Internet platforms like Google, Meta, Wikipedia, and online university modules such as MOOCs are increasingly determining what we mean by ‘knowledge’. In education, digital databases are replacing not only the old-fashioned library but also the teacher’s role as the dispenser of knowledge to the student. If something isn’t on Google then it might as well not exist. What does this mean for a student’s view of the world? Who gets to decide what is important and what is not? It is vital to know what websites like Wikipedia and search engines like Google look like on the inside and to understand how they work, while the process of knowledge production is being increasingly left to software algorithms. What are the real-world politics behind these algorithms, editing bots, and online courses?

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Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam)

The Institute of Network Cultures (INC) is part of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS, HvA in Dutch), faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries. Within this faculty, the INC is part of the knowledge centre. The responsibilities of the INC include the provision of internships, lectures, and BA thesis supervision.

Back in 2004, Geert Lovink’s appointment was one of 300 ‘lector’ positions across national applied universities assigned to formulate the research agenda for Dutch vocational education.

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Who is who

The INC team on Thursday 3 March 2022. Top row: Morgane Billuart, Isis Polak, Jordi Viader Guerrero, Chloë Arkenbout, Laurence Scherz, Maria van der Togt, Gianmarco Cristofari. Middle row: Maisa Imamović, Dunja Nešović, Tommaso Campagna, Sepp Eckenhaussen. Bottom row: Georgiana Cojocaru, Angela Luong, Geert Lovink

The INC team on Tuesday 24 September 2024. From left to right: August Kaasa Sundgaard, Sepp Eckenhaussen, Tommaso Campagna, Jordi Viader Guerrero, Maja Korczyńska, Carolina Pinto, Diana Millán, Salome Berdzenishvili, Chloë Arkenbout, Geert Lovink

The Institute of Network Cultures works with a small team (usually 5-6 staff members) from the office in Amsterdam. Researchers and interns from the Netherlands and abroad join on a project basis, adding value, expertise, and new perspectives. Together they form the widespread collaboration network of the INC.

INC Staff

Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic, and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016) and Sad by Design (2019). In 2003 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne, followed by a postdoc position at the University of Queensland. In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). From 2004-2012 he was associated professor in the new media program of Media studies, University of Amsterdam. In 2005-2006 he was a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study (Wiko) in Berlin. From 2007-2017 he taught at the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee/Malta) where he supervised five Ph.D. students. Late 2021 Geert Lovink was appointed Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the Art History Department, Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam. The Chair (one day a week until September 2026) is supported by the Amsterdam University of Applied Science. Contact: geert[at]networkcultures[dot]org.

Sepp Eckenhaussen joined the Institute of Network Cultures in 2020 as an editor, researcher, and producer. He is responsible for the (digital) publishing programs, research development, and production. He holds an rMA in Art Studies from the University of Amsterdam. In 2019, Sepp’s first book, Scenes of Independence: Cultural Ruptures in Zagreb (1991-2019), was published by the INC. Sepp combines his work at the INC with the position of co-director at Platform BK. Email: sepp[at]networkcultures[dot]org.

Chloë Arkenbout joined INC in October 2020 as a researcher, editor, and producer.  She studied both Media Studies and Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam  (BA+MA) and worked as a freelance copywriter, journalist, and communications specialist in the culture and social sector for several years before joining the INC. She is interested in marginalized people and their tactics to challenge oppressive discourses in the digital public sphere – from social media comment wars to memes. They co-edited the first, second and third Critical Meme Reader. Arkenbout also teaches at the Communication & Multimedia Design program at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and was a member of the university’s Research Ethics Committee (2021-24) as part of her work on diversity, inclusion and social safety.  Email: chloe[at]networkcultures.org.

Tommaso Campagna joined INC as a researcher and editor in August 2021. He holds a Research Master in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and he previously worked together with different activists and research groups such as Tracking-Exposed, Hackmedia, and Amsterdam Alternative. Initially, he joined INC in 2019/2020 as a research and publishing intern for the Making Public project. Afterward, he continued by training the digital publishing interns, producing digital publications, working on research projects (tactical visual culture, our creative reset), together with keeping track of the INC website and video publications. In addition, Tommaso is a visual artist and works on documentary films. Email: tommaso[at]networkcultures.org.

Current INC interns

Maja Korczyńska is a visual artist whose practice spans performance, publications, and video art. An MA Fine Arts graduate of the University of the Arts in Poznań, she focuses on exploring and challenging contemporary paradigms of the face, body, and identity. Korczyńska’s work resonates with themes of mass culture and tradition. She is researching TikTok and artificial intelligence in the context of cultural codes, societal constructs, and self-image.

Affiliated researchers

The Technological Zombie is the research blog of Donatella Della Ratta, a writer, performer, and curator specializing in digital media and networked technologies, with a focus on the Arab world. Donatella Della Ratta is the author of Shooting a Revolution (Pluto Press, 2018) and the INC Longform Teaching into the Void. In 2017, together with INC and Roma Tre, she organized the conference Fear and Loathing of the Online Self. She teaches Media and Communications at John Cabot University, Rome, and tweets avidly at @donatelladr.

Spectres of Control is the collaborative blog of Anna-Verena Nosthoff and Felix Maschewski. Anna-Verena Nosthoff is a philosopher and a political theorist, teaching at the Institute of political sciences at the University of Vienna and at FU Berlin. She was a research fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute for the networked societies and published on critical theory, the aesthetics of resistance, digital politics, algorithmic governmentality, and (neo-)cybernetic governance, in journals such as Behemoth, Thesis Eleven, Cultural Politics, Culture, Theory & Critique, and Leviathan. As an essayist, she regularly writes for Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Die Republik, Philosophie Magazin, Neue Zürcher Zeitung and other publications. Her book Die Gesellschaft der Wearables, co-authored with Felix Maschewski, was published by Nicolai Publishing & Intelligence (Berlin, 2019). Felix Maschewski is a member of the PhD-net ‘Das Wissen der Literatur’ (HU Berlin/ Princeton University), currently teaching at FU Berlin. He is also a research associate at Institut für Wirtschaftsgestaltung (Berlin). Apart from articles in Behemoth, Leviathan, Thesis Eleven and Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie, he regularly writes essays for Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Die Republik, Philosophie Magazin, Wirtschaftswoche, Internazionale and Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Good Neighbours As invited research fellows, researcher Natalie Dixon (South Africa) and interactive artist Klasien van de Zandschulp (NL) combine their two worlds of art practice and media theory to analyze contemporary network culture. For Good Neighbours, their joint focus is on intimate forms of neighbourhood surveillance; mobilised by their deeply felt reaction to instances of othering and exclusion witnessed in South Africa and the Netherlands. While these countries share a problematic history, they also share similar practices of mobile communication and ideals of neighbourliness. As an artist-theorist team, van de Zandschulp and Dixon will be developing critical theory on WhatsApp and the intimate networks of community surveillance enabled through this platform.

No Fun – Jess Henderson is a writer, researcher, theorist, and author of Offline Matters: The Less-Digital Guide to Creative Work (BIS Publishers, Amsterdam, 2020). The book exposes the true techno-determinist state of creative work today, resulting from three years of intensive research conducted as an insider precariat of the creative industries. Jess is currently based in Zürich, undertaking the first transdisciplinary study of burnout. Follow more of her work here.

Living Industry – Maisa Imamović is an Amsterdam-based writer, designer, and web developer. She graduated from Gerrit Rietveld’s Architectural Design department in 2018. She also pursued the Full-Stack Web Development Certificate at BSSA. Her main research interest is the island of boredom, and the impossibility to be bored. It’s about restlessness and the constant search for distraction. She studies trends, cliches, and conditions of honesty experienced by many. For her design practice, she creates situations of doing nothing/cutting productivity to zero. Since her web-development journey, she has been observant of how programming languages program lifestyles through user experience. She was recently published in Kajet and Simulacrum. INC published, amonst others, her long-forms “How to Nothing” and “Club-wise” and in September 2022 her first book The Psychology of the Web Developer.

Performance of code – Nancy Mauro-Flude‘s research explores how we articulate the resonances and dissonances between performing arts and computer science, usually within the context of contemporary art. She has devised, curated, and developed numerous experimental cross-disciplinary artworks, durational events, and pedagogical programmes that examine how networked systems, embodiment, and emergent technologies manifest in contemporary culture, including, Waag Society: institute for art, science, and technology, Museum of New and Old Art (MONA), Transmediale, What the Hack, Contemporary Art Tasmania, FILE, International Symposium on Electronic Art and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. 
 
She has also given numerous workshops and masterclasses in hardware, software art, and performance, planetary computing, creative hacking, networked art forms, counter-surveillance, command-line programming for artists, augmented reality, and UNIX/Linux worldwide. She is an advocate of Free and Open Source Software and is a supporter of, and contributor to, initiatives that promote and reinforce rights in the networked domain. Nancy was awarded an MA in Media Design, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, University of Applied Sciences (2007) and a PhD from the University of Tasmania (2014). In 2015 she was appointed professor of art and technology at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norwegian University of Science and Technology and then worked at RMIT (Melbourne). sister0.tv | miss-hack.org

Welcome To The Entreprecariat – Silvio Lorusso is a Rotterdam-based artist, designer, and researcher. His current research focuses on the relationship between entrepreneurship and precarity, i.e. entreprecariat. His work was shown at Transmediale (Berlin, Germany), NRW- Forum (Düsseldorf, Germany), Impakt (Utrecht, Netherlands), Sight & Sound (Montreal, Canada), Adhocracy (Athens, Greece), Biennale Architettura (Venezia, Italy). He holds a Ph.D. in Design Sciences from the School of Doctorate Studies – Iuav University of Venice. He is an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures of Amsterdam. His writing has appeared in Prismo, Printed Web 3, Metropolis M, Progetto Grafico, Digicult, Diid, and Doppiozero. His work has been featured in, among others, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and Wired. Since 2013, he manages the Post-Digital Publishing Archive (p-dpa.net). Currently, he works as a mentor at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences’ PublishingLab. Silvio can be reached at s [at] silviolorusso [dot] com.

Proof of Work – Max Dovey assisted with the MoneyLab project. He describes himself as 28.3% man, 14.1% artist, and 8.4% successful. He holds a BA Hons in Fine Art: Time Based Media and a MA (MDes) in Media Design from Piet Zwart Institute. His performances confront how computers, software, and data affect the human condition. Specifically, he is interested in how the meritocracy of neo-liberal ideology is embedded in technology and digital culture. His research is in liveness and real-time computation in performance and theatre.  He works as a producer and creative technologist for live events and theatre in both The Netherlands and the U.K.

Valeria Ferrari is a writer and researcher based in Bologna. She holds a PhD from the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam; her work explores the interaction between decentralized technologies and law enforcement, and the possibilities for expression of political agency through digital infrastructures. In particular, her thesis is centred around the study of digital money and digital value systems. She is also a member of the collective Slutty Urbanism, a provocative initiative that addresses issues of social responsibility, activism and hybrid social practices in the urban arena.  On Kabul Megazine, she wrote about the relationship between digital technologies and self-perceptions of the body. She is the founder and former chief editor of the Glossary of Distributed Techno–social Systems, hosted by the Internet Policy Review.

Stefan Heidenreich works as an author, journalist and researcher, based in Berlin. His fields of research concern the democratization of art institutions, moneyless networked economies, and oligarchic forms of democracy. He has lectured at the Universities of Basel, Cologne, at the ETH Zürich and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at the Leuphana University in Lüneburg. More here: www.stefanheidenreich.de.

Jordi Viader Guerrero is a practice-based researcher on the philosophy of technology and media, currently doing a PhD at TU Delft. His research and practice are chiefly focused on articulating digital culture and design within wider cultural, political, and epistemic logics. By conceiving technology as a medium for production, destruction, and expression of identities, his work is an invitation to critically explore contemporary sociotechnical subjectivities. He is participating in the INC VOID project.

Ying-Tzu (Connie) Lin joined INC in 2023. She is a sociological-trained urban planning researcher. She holds MSc in Landscape Architecture and Spatial planning from Wageningen University and a PhD from the University of Amsterdam. She is the founder and editor of the Mandarin web media Eyes on Place and the artistic research collective Slutty Urbanism. Her research explores the complexity of digital-socio-spatial dynamics in urban public spaces and urban commons.

Irma Mastenbroek is a Berlin-based digital rights activist and technofeminist. She has a background in mathematics with a focus on network science, AI, and data feminism. She founded LODelle, for digital feminist networks and initiated a collaborative project to hold major online pornography platforms accountable and rebuild the industry with consent and more Cyber Love. Irma is involved in researching AI bias and working on AI auditing and ethics. Additionally, she co-organized an AI art exhibition, curates for re:publica, spoke at CCC and is working towards translating feminist principles into mathematics.

Agnieszka Antkowiak is an artist, researcher and educator. She graduated in Cultural Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. She also holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of the Arts in Poznan where she currently is a research and academic assistant in the Photography in Contexts Studio. In 2022 she started the Art & Performance Research Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She works across a range of media probing the technological impact on human unconscious behaviours and its mobilization within the economies of attention, affect and presence.

Klara Debeljak studied in Prague and Amsterdam (Rietveld) and is a multi-disciplinary artist whose core medium is research expressed in hybrid audio-visual or text formats. She works in chapters that bleed into each other, mapping out a web of causality. Reflecting upon intimacy and identity in the online sphere, radicalized media chambers and the architecture of the internet, qualifying the treatment and value of time from a socio-economic view and dissecting the reliability of opinion and infrastructure through access and visibility. She was an intern from September 2023 to February 2024 and published numerous pieces on the INC blog.

Emily Morrissey is working with INC to research methods of teaching media literacy. She is an expected graduate of John Cabot University in Rome in the summer of 2024 and will be starting her master’s in media studies, cultural data, and AI at the University of Amsterdam in the Fall of 2024.

Tripta Chandola is an ethnographer, writer and editor based in India. She completed her doctorate from Queensland University of Technology, Australia, in 2010. She has held research positions at NUS, Singapore and RMIT, Melbourne. She has also worked as a research consultant for several international and national projects. She has published in international peer-review journals and contributed to edited book collections. In 2015, BBC World Service commissioned a radio programme based on her doctoral research titled Listening into Others.  Her first book, Listening into others: An Ethnographic Exploration in Govindpuri, was published by INC. It is available for download here. She is affiliated with the INC, and provides her editorial expertise  on a regular basis. She is currently working on her second INC project, “The Shrieking Subaltern: A Listener Reports (Or, An Autoethnography of the Savarna Lifeworlds)”.

Noah Pellikaan joined the INC in 2024 and is an Amsterdam-based student of Literary & Cultural Analysis (BA, Universiteit van Amsterdam) from Portland, Oregon with a background in political theory (UvA) & global studies (Portland Community College). Noah has held a number of positions within the UvA working on ethics and student advocacy and is the former president of the Central Student Council. He has worked in the past on union organizing and campaign mobilization and is active in a number of action groups for the Palestinian cause, academic democratization, and climate justice.

Giulia Timis is an Amsterdam-based visual artist whose research focuses on virtual reality and 3D, experimenting with the possibilities of interaction between digital environments and performance practices. In 2022-2023 she worked at the streaming web art studio UKRAiNATV (Kraków). In spring 2024 she finished her MA in Net Art at Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan, resulting in an INC longform that reflects on her experiences at UKRAiNATV. Since September 2023 she’s a member of the INC VOID team.

INC has collaborated with:

Lily Antflick, research intern for the project the Unbound Book and Theory on Demand series.

Kate Babin is a graduate of the University of Amsterdam where she completed a Master’s in New Media and Digital Culture with a thesis on the paradox of collective loneliness online. Previously, she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Communication and Cultural Studies at Concordia University. Kate is interested in subcultural communities as affective publics and the significance of platform governance in shaping collectivity and connection online. After her INC internship she started in September 2023 her PhD research at the University of Coventry, based on her MA thesis that dealt with incel forums and toxic masculinity.

Srividya Balasubramanian, research intern for the project Society of the Query, as a part of the Bachelor of Social Sciences in Communications and New Media from the National University of Singapore.

Matthew Beros intern assisting with the Hybrid Publishing Lab project, next to completing a Masters degree in Book and Digital Media Studies at Leiden University.

Paul Bille is a German graphic designer, thinking about what it means to be a cloud-based graphic designer. His practice so far is defined by building websites and visual identities for and with artists, friends, and himself. As an affiliated researcher he interested in the gap between surface and underlying structure and how this takes shape in the design of digital (ad-)networks, platforms, and online identities.

Morgane Billuart is a visual artist and writer who investigates the ways technological and digital advancements can help us create tools and experiences that serve us best and permit some sort of emancipation rather than alienation. She believes this can only happen through self-organization and the alliance of disciplines as well as diverse forms of expertise. After finishing Rietveld Academy in 2o21 she used her INC internship (2021-2022) to produce a number of INC Longforms.

Marijn Bril is a Rotterdam-based designer who recently graduated from the Eindhoven Design Academy and did a pre-masters program Media Studies/Digital Cultures at Maastricht University.

Juliana Brunello, research intern for the project Wikipeda, as part of the Bachelor of Arts degree from the Universitaet Siegen (DE) in Social Sciences with an emphasis in Media Studies.

Marije Brom, research intern on the  Society of the Query project and the MyCreativity project.

Tim Brouwer, worked as an intern for the MoneyLab project in 2018.

Marta Burugorri, intern involved in the Video Vortex project (2013-2014).

Bella Calabretta, research intern, working on INC publications.

Victor Chaix is a master student in Digital Humanities, at the University of Bologna. Interested in the philosophy and the semiotics of the circulation of online information and meaning, he has worked both for an online newspaper and within projects launched by Bernard Stiegler, while he was in Paris. He prepared his Master’s thesis at the INC, theorizing and experimenting with possibilities for “social text” – a heightened potential for texts in their digital configurations opened up by the like of web annotation, collaborative writing and metadata interventions. He is also a founding member and vice-president of the Association des Amis de la Génération Thunberg (AAGT), for which he is in charge of the blog (intern in 2023).

Georgiana Cojocaru is a writer, editor, curator and critic. She published the longform Machine Dreaming: On Writing with Language Transformers (INC intern in 2022/23, currently based in Berlin).

Francesca Coluzzi worked as a research intern at INC from September 2012 – January 2013, conducting interviews and blogging for the Oor of Ink project.

Gianmarco Cristofari worked as a lawyer and data protection consultant. He holds a Ph.D. in Global Studies from the University of Macerata, Italy, on the politico-legal challenges of ‘platformization’. In 2021/22, he spent almost a year at INC, working on his book The Politics of Platformization, a series of interviews on platform theory, published in the Theory on Demand series.

Morgan Currie was a researcher for the project Economies of the Commons and the Unbound Book, did her PhD at UCLA and is currently teaching in Edinburgh.

Maurice Dharampal is an RMA Media Studies student at the University of Amsterdam. Being educated in New Media, his interests include a humanities approach towards digital subcultures such as online conspiracism, memetics, censorship and digital equity. He aims to translate insights from new media research into insights that stimulate public debate.

Anastasia Dolitsay is a multidisciplinary digital artist and designer, who works primarily with sound and immersive 3D environments that mediate the line between humans and the machine. Through their work, they investigate post-internet mythologies and radical queer embodiment in virtual spaces, that undermine capitalist gender architecture on/offline (intern in 2023, now studying at UvA).

Vicentiu Dinga, research intern at INC for Society of the Query #2 and the MoneyLab project (2013-2014).

Dennis Deicke, research intern for the project Society of the Query as part of his study of Communication and Cultural Management at the Zeppelin University (DE).

Leonieke van Dipten, worked as a project lead at INC, involved in the INC publications and the Art of Criticism.

Barbara Dubbeldam was a research assistant at the Institute of Network Cultures and was involved with production, INC publications, and the Making Public project.

Marije van Eck, wrote her BA-thesis, an analysis of the phenomenon of user-generated content on YouTube, in order to complete the New Media and Digital Culture program at Utrecht University (NL).

Andrew Erlanger, a research intern from February – April 2013, working on the Unlike Us #3 conference on social media.

Erica Gargaglione is an artist and designer who experiments with collective publishing methods, with a critical view of how things are made public. Her work evolves around digital tools and situated small-scale technology infrastructures that facilitate public spaces for cultural production, relations of care and collaborative autonomy. She was an intern at INC from October 2023-February 2024.

Inte Gloerich was project coordinator for the Institute of Network Cultures (2015-2020). She holds an MA in New Media and Digital Culture from the University of Amsterdam. Her work involves the politics, artistic imaginations, and (counter)cultures around digital technology, digital economy, and online identity. She co-edited the INC publications MoneyLab Reader 2 and State Machines. In September 2020 she started her HvA-funded PhD research while also teaching at Media studies (UvA).

Cecilia Guida, art critic, theorist, and art historian, who once was a  PhD candidate at the IULM University of Milan (IT) where she conducted research on the social and political functions of art practice in the networked society. As an INC intern, he was involved in the Video Vortex project.

Larissa Hildebrandt, produced the Unlike Us #3 conference in Amsterdam.

Minke Kampman, research intern as part of writing her thesis for MA New Media at the University of Amsterdam (NL). She was involved in the WinterCamp project.

Marleen Kerssemakers was a project manager at the INC, focused on grant applications.

René König, Ph.D. researcher and INC intern from September 2012 – January 2013, worked on the Society of the Query project on search engines.

Silvio Lorusso, design theorist, Ph.D. in Design Sciences at IUAV University of Venice, investigating the intersections between publishing and digital technology from the perspective of art and design. Silvio designed and maintained the INC website for many years, worked as a designer at the INC PublishingLab, and was part of both RAAK projects (Hybrid Publishing Toolkit and Making Public).

Inga Luchs, research intern working on INC publications as part of the preparation for a MA in Culture, Arts, and Media.

Angela Luong worked at INC from November 2021 till July 2022 as an assistant involved with administration and INC publication.

Eleni Maragkou pursued a research master’s in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and holds a BA in Media and Communications from the University of Athens. She was previously a staff writer at popaganda.gr. and worked as an intern at INC in 2020.

Charlotte Marie was an intern in the Spring of 2024, working on Critical Meme Reader III.

Lisa Marsman, research assistant in 2021/2022, trying to understand why people make certain decisions on the web.

Gráinne Maxwell research Intern as part of her MA programme Cultural History of Modern Europe at Utrecht University.

Jasmin Meg was INC intern in 2022-23 and is a current research masters student in the University of Amsterdam studying New Media and Digital Culture. With a bachelor’s in Media and Philosophy, their research interests lie in the digital development of epistemologies, digital post-humanism and post-colonial theory. In 2023 they write their thesis concerning rapid publishing, acts of resistance and grief.

Kelly Mostert was a project coordinator at the Institute for Network Cultures, and was responsible for coordinating the ‘Making Public’ project on innovations in digital publishing.

Rachel Somers Miles, worked at INC from April 2010 – April 2011 on the Culture Vortex and Video vortex program and was editor of the VVII Reader.

Carlos García Moreno-Torres, worked at INC as an intern involved in the Video Vortex project from September 2010 to April 2011.

Dunja Nešović is a 2021 graduate from the RMA programme in Critical Studies in Art and Culture at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Having a background in film production and theory, she complemented her passion for audiovisual culture with media studies theories and perspectives that allow for inspecting the pervasive and everyday uses of technology. Her most recent research interests comprised of inspecting digitally created and mediated notions of visibility, identity, and sociality. During her internship at INC (2021-2022) is published two longforms and edited the screenshot zine.

Vera van de Nieuwenhof was a project assistant at the INC and was involved in event organisation and communication.

Sabine Niederer, worked at INC from September 2004 – January 2012 as the managing director of the Institute of Network Cultures.

Shirley Niemans worked at INC as a producer and researcher, involved in many projects from September 2006 – August 2008.

Evelien van Nieuwenhoven, a researcher at INC early 2021 now teaching in the Creative Business program of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam.

Sebastian Olma prepared a book publication on the conditions of creative production in the age of manufactured serendipity and creative industries within the MyCreativity project.

Michelle Oosthuyzen, worked at the INC as an intern and researcher, February 2012 – April 2012.

Stijn Peeters, a research intern from February – April 2013, worked on the Unlike Us #3 conference on the critique of social media.

Frederiek Pennink was an intern for the Society of the Query #2 conference in 2013.

Carolina Pinto was a project coordinator for Going Hybrid from May-December 2023.

Alice Picco was an intern at INC from March-July 2024.

Valeria Pugliese was a research intern for the Making Public project, for which she redesigned the Digital Publishing toolkit. She studied Communication and Design for Publishing at ISIA Urbino in Italy.

Miriam Rasch started working with the Institute of Network Cultures in June 2012 and left in October 2020. She worked as a researcher on projects around hybrid publishing, art criticism, social media, and web search, and was a lecturer in the HvA minor in Philosophy. She holds a master’s degree in Literary Studies (2002) and Philosophy (2005). She edited many INC publications, networks and research projects. In 2017 her essay collection Zwemmen in de oceaan: Berichten uit een postdigitale wereld was published by De Bezige Bij followed by Frictie, ethiek in tijden van dataïsme (2020). In 2018 Shadowbook: Writing Through the Digital 2014-2018 was released in the INC Deep Pockets series, followed by Fricties, ethiek in tijden van dataisme in 2020. She writes book reviews and essays for different websites and magazines. She was a member of the Ethical Board of AUAS and still is of the editorial boards of De Nieuwe Garde, The Low Countries, and Eurozine.

Margreet Riphagen, started at the INC in 2008 as a project manager and was coordinator of the PublishingLab (2015-2018). She then worked as Track Program Coordinator of the Digital Society School, also part of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences before moving to Hogeschool Utrecht.

Ksenia Rybak from Kyviv was intern at INC in the first half of 2024 and worked on drone theory and Ukranian drone operators.

Laurence Scherz was a copy editor and project coordinator of Going Hybrid in 2022-2023.

Kimberley Spreeuwenberg was project coordinator of the Digital Publishing Toolkit research project and now teaches at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

Donato Spinelli was a research and publishing intern and worked on Urgent Publishing and Our Commons.

Marc Stumpel, worked at INC as a producer and researcher, involved in Unlike Us, September 2011 – April 2012.

Leila Ueberschlag worked at the INC as an intern for the organization of MoneyLab #3 in 2016.

Rosie Underwood was a Publishing Intern for the Institute of Network Culture.

Patricia de Vries was project coordinator at the Institute of Network Cultures from 2013-2020, in particular responsible for building up the MoneyLab network. During her time at INC she did her PhD research, published by INC as Algorithmic Anxiety in Contemporary Art.

Matthijs Weijers was a research intern on the Digital Publishing Toolkit project, as part of his final thesis for the HvA direction Media, Marketing and Publishing (MIC).

Serena Westra started as an intern involved with the Critical Point of View event (2008) and worked in different functions for the INC up till 2013.

Agnieszka Wodzińska is a graduate of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she completed an MA in Contemporary Art History. Prior, Agnieszka worked as an editor of educational content and a creative writer in Glasgow, Scotland. Agnieszka’s current research interests include queer theory, counter-archiving practices, and environmental art (INC intern in 2020).

Jess van Zyl was an intern assisting with the Hybrid Publishing project and later worked as a researcher with the PublishingLab.