Academic staff

  • Dr Désirée Förster (Programme Coordinator)

    Désirée Förster is an Assistant Professor for Media and Culture Studies, with an interest in media aesthetics, affect, and experimental practices. 

  • Dr Michiel de Lange (Programme Coordinator)

    Michiel de Lange is Assistant Professor in New Media Studies, and co-founder of The Mobile City, 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 The Hackable City, about the ways digital media shape the future of city making.

  • Dr Karin van Es

    Karin van Es is Assistant Professor of Television & Digital Culture at Utrecht University and a Senior Researcher at the Utrecht Data School. Her current research focuses on the challenges of the digital context to traditional television.

  • Dr René Glas

    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 University’s Center for the Study of Digital Games and Play.

  • Dr Ingrid Hoofd

    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.

  • 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 University. His current research is part of the field of critical data studies and investigates contemporary big data phenomena through historical methods.

  • Dr Anne Kustritz

    Anne Kustritz is an Assistant Professor in Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. 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. Joost Raessens

    Joost Raessens holds the chair of Media Theory at Utrecht University. 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 University Press) and editorial board member of Games and Culture (SAGE).

  • 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 University. His research interests include game theory and methodology, game ethics, game history, games and narratology, film studies, and digital media theory.

  • Dr Stefan Werning

    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.