Meet Professor of Practice Marleen Stikker

Our Professors of Practice each have their own area of expertise and each represents one of the ‘3 Ds’ in our strategic plan at AUAS. With Marleen Stikker on board, AUAS now has a Professor of Practice with vast experience in the realm of digitalisation. This page explains what she’s doing at AUAS.

Marleen Stikker is an internet pioneer, founder and director of research institution Waag and was instrumental in the creation of the Digital City, PICNIC and We Make the City. She was heavily involved in the multi-award-winning FairPhone and the Amsterdam iCapital bid, and was a guest on the critically acclaimed VPRO television programme 'Zomergasten' in 2018. But above all, she is a widely celebrated advocate of open, fair and inclusive technology.

By appointing her, the AUAS aims to take a stand: the Internet and all related technologies are too important to be left in the hands of a few big companies, because our values as individuals and as a society are at stake. From fake news to Airbnb and Uber: the interests of citizens, cities and governments are not paramount to 'big tech'. This needs to change, and it starts with bringing critical awareness to education.

Marleen Stikker instroduces herself and describes what she wants to do at AUAS

In her role as Professor of Practice for Digitalisation, Marleen will be working with the AUAS (under the wing of FDMCI) to help design the transition to the digital society. Marleen is a major contributor to the thought process on responsible and user-centered development of technology.

Digitalisation has a major impact on our teaching and research because it rigorously changes both the way we work and the content we teach. The urgency of this issue was underlined when Covid-19 forced almost all of our activities to go digital overnight, giving us very little time to ask ourselves what that really meant.

Digitalisation has established deep roots in our society and technology, with unprecedented new opportunities being offered in practically all areas. The possibilities offered by innovations like artificial intelligence, big data, virtual/augmented reality, the internet of things and 5G are enormous and in the years to come, the number of possibilities will continue to skyrocket. One consequence of this is that digitalisation will transform professional practice in all sectors for which the AUAS trains its students. And of course, digitalisation will also transform higher education itself, including organisational operations and HR policy. Data also plays a substantial role in our learning and working processes. We use this data responsibly, with a solid focus on security, privacy, management, transparency and ethics.

We are helping to shape the transition to a digital society and contributing to responsible and user-oriented development of technology. Our graduates enter the professional field armed with the latest knowledge and skills in the area of digitalisation. Via open education, open science and our open digital ecosystem, we are contributing to the development of knowledge in the professional field and society. We also incorporate the latest digital developments into our curricula: every student graduating from AUAS is digitally skilled and fully prepared for the digital transformation taking place in the professional field they are about to enter.

The knowledge and skills that they gain also incorporate ethics and integrity in relation to digitalisation, as these issues are permanently addressed and discussed at AUAS. We make use of digital resources in order to improve our relationship with students, staff and partners and enable them to remain part of our knowledge network for their entire lives in a variety of roles.

20 February 2022