I am a writer, researcher, curator and advisor based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. My main area of interest is digital media and society.
I have contributed to several books, magazines and newspapers, both with written and photographed accounts. I have participated in art shows and commercial events, given lectures, taught university classes, organized conferences and written reports. The topics that have kept me busy over the last years have varied from urban culture to journalism, from mobile phone research to civil society, from locative media to (sub)cultural identity. They usually fall in one of the five following categories that I consider as my areas of expertise:
• Digital Culture, Technology & Society
• Globalization, Localization, Media & Cultural Identity
• Technology, Journalism, Civil Society and Public Sphere
• Locative and Mobile Media
• Urban Culture and Urban Development
Currently I am writing a dissertation , supervised by prof. Rene Boomekens at the department of practical philosophy at the University of Groningen. I am also connected to the department of mediastudies at the University of Amsterdam, where over the last few years I taught classes on new media theory.
I am currently a member of the board of the Dutch Cultural Broadcasting Fund. It is the aim of the fund to provide grants to encourage the development and production of cultural radio and television programmes as well as digital cultural products.
At the end of the last century, I lived in the USA where I studied as an exchange student (UC Berkeley) and worked as a free lance reporter in Silicon Valley for Dutch Media during the dotcom boom days. I have also travelled extensively, mainly in Asia and the middle east and lately I have spent quite some time in China, where amongst others I made a series of radio documentaries for Dutch Public Broadcasting.
I am also the proud father of www.keeslukasdewaal.nlWaal</a>. And I like to cook www.martijndewaal.nl/recepten/
