Martijn de Waal is AUAS Professor of the research group Civic Interaction Design. He has a background in journalism, media studies and practical philosophy. His research focus is on the relation between digital media and public space, with specific interest in civic media and digital placemaking. His PhD thesis The City as Interface. How Digital Media Are Changing the City was published by NAi010 publishers in 2014. He is a co-founder of The Mobile City, a non-profit that since 2007 has organized numerous workshops and events on digital media and urban culture, and also co-founded DeNieuweReporter in 2005, a lead- ing Dutch blog on the future of journalism. Before working at the AUAS he was an assistant profes- sor in media studies at the University of Amster- dam. In 2009 he was a visiting scholar at the MIT Centre for Civic Media. Around the change of the century, he worked as a journalist working for a diverse range of Dutch media (de Volkskrant, VPRO Radio, Emerce) covering technology & society. He was appointed professor of the Play and Civic Media research group in February 2020.