As a sociologist, I am interested in the unintended effects and underlying mechanisms of relevant inventions and innovations in society, such as (digital) technology and its adoption. I investigate the nature and impact thereof in a broad sense - individual, organization and society - with colleagues, the professional field and students, specifically focusing on digital literacy and interventions for digital inclusion.

As an associate professor of digital literacy and inclusion, I work across disciplines on solutions for the digital divide and digital inequality, through co-creation and participatory action research among other ways. Several perspectives are leading in this:

1) improving the accessibility through inclusive and accessible design and development of digital technology,

2) motivating people to (continue to) learn critical digital skills, and

3) improving the connection between existing support structures, the learning offer (including digital tools and environments) and residents with low digital skills.

At the regional level, I work together with colleagues from the lectorate and the Digital Literacy Coalition, a network organization in which Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen plays an active role and whose mission is to help residents raise their level of digital literacy and skills, also in collaboration with the Digital Academy Northern Netherlands and local parties. We work from the question: Which interventions can be designed and experimented with in an accessible way at a local level?

At the international level, we work together with colleagues and students in a number of Erasmus+ initiatives, including IGNITION (https://www.ignition-erasmus.eu/) under the flag of the Stars European University Alliance (https://starseu.org).

At the national level, we have been affiliated as Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen with the ‘Alliantie Digitaal Samenleven’ since May 2023, whose mission we endorse and to whose agenda we contribute with our research.