OII | Margie Cheesman

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About
Positions at the OII
Contact
Research
News
Supervisors at the OII

About

Margie Cheesman is a digital anthropologist, working with communities using and making digitalisation projects. Her DPhil research examined the intervention of decentralised digital infrastructures (blockchains) in humanitarianism, and involved fieldwork in Jordan’s refugee camps. She is interested in how the development of money and identity infrastructures intersects with socio-economic inequalities and rights.

Margie has worked for the civil liberties initiative, Open Migration, and the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change (CReSC). She has conducted research with international organisations such as InfoMigrants, GSMA Mobile for Development, and United Nations agencies. Margie is Assistant Editor of the journal Big Data & Society, and her editorial work includes Data Politics: Worlds, Subjects and Rights (Routledge, 2019) and Data Practices (forthcoming).

Research Interests

Aid and migration studies, feminist technoscience, critical data studies, anthropology.

Positions at the OII

DPhil Student, October 2017 - September 2022

Contact

@margchee

Google Scholar

Research

Publications

All Publications

Publications

A. Martin, E. Schoemaker, K. Weitzberg, M. Cheesman (2021) Researching digital identity in times of crisis, The Alan Turing Institute
K. Weitzberg, M. Cheesman, A. Martin, E. Schoemaker (2021) Between surveillance and recognition: Rethinking digital identity in aid, Big Data & Society 8(1)
M. Cheesman and A. Slavin (2021) Self-sovereign identity and forced migration: slippery terms and the refugee data apparatus, in Digital Identity, Virtual Borders and Social Media: A Panacea for Migration Governance? Ed. E. E. Korkmaz
Sim, K and M. Cheesman (2020) What’s the harm in categorisation? Reflections on the categorisation work of Tech 4 Good, Big Data & Society blog
M. Cheesman, Self-sovereignty for refugees? The contested horizons of digital identity (2020) Geopolitics
Gillespie, M., Osseiran, S. and Cheesman, M. (2018) Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances, Social Media + Society
M. Cheesman, The role of big data in refugee contexts (2017) Open Migration.
M. Cheesman, Mapping refugee media journeys: smartphones and social networks (2016) Open Migration

News

Blogs & Press releases

Decentralised digital identity: what is it, and what does it mean for marginalised populations?

1 July 2021

Use of big data have raised fears that tech will enable privacy violations by states and business, especially at the expense of marginalised populations. What role does 'decentralised' identity have in countering these problems at the global margins?

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Anticipating Blockchain for Development: Data, Power and the Future

20 November 2017

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Supervisors at the OII

Professor Mark Graham

Professor of Internet Geography

Mark Graham is an economic geographer. His research focuses on digital labour, the gig economy, and digital inequalities. He is the author, most recently, of The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction.

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Professor Joss Wright

Associate Professor

Joss Wright's research interests lie in information controls, privacy-enhancing technologies, and cyber-enabled crime. His current research focuses on measuring internet censorship, and uncovering the online illegal wildlife trade.

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Past supervisor at the OII

Professor Gina Neff

Former Professor of Technology & Society

Professor Neff is the Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy at the University of Cambridge. She is a sociologist who studies innovation, the digital transformation of industries, and how new technologies impact work.

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