Dr. A.A.C.G. van der Graaf | People Pages: Find employees & contact details

Shenja van der Graaf is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Science at the University of Twente. If there is one common thread joining her research activities together, it is an interest in moments of transition and the dynamics that accompany them arising from innovations associated with information and communication technologies. Interests and expertise focus on production and consumption cultures; media (histories) and everyday life; media infrastructures; media / ICT (responsible) innovation and regulation in the public interest; and, alternative economic and governance systems.

Van der Graaf has held several research, advisory and management positions, in particular in the Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Japan, and USA. In various positions she has served as a PI on major grants and consulted with public and private entities, such as OECD, European Commission, UN, Turner Networks, and Microsoft. Her expertise has also been shown and translated into various lectureships, (board) memberships and publications. In this capacity, she has been committed to exploring how greater understanding of media systems can inform and assist citizens, scholars and policymakers in Europe and abroad to advance campaigns for technological literacy, creative expression, social justice, and human rights.

Before joining the BMS faculty, van der Graaf was Principal Researcher at imec-SMIT, VUB leading the Unit ‘Data Governance & Communities’ (former ‘Smart Cities’), where she also served as a Board member.

Van der Graaf is a graduate of Utrecht University (MA, 1999), Leiden University (Postgrad, 2000) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (PhD, 2009). She has been an honorary fellow at MIT Media Lab (ID3 Hub), a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society (Harvard) and the Research Center for Information Law (University of St. Gallen), a consulting researcher at Convergence Culture Consortium (MIT), an alumna of the Oxford Internet Institute (Oxford), and worked as consultant for Hakuhodo Inc. in Tokyo.

Organisations

If there is one common thread joining my research activities together, it is an interest in moments of transition and the dynamics that accompany them.

Amidst social, technological and economic challenges, I have been particularly intrigued by the governance of new technologies and digital culture, and organizational and micro-level change, especially, at the intersection of commerce and the community.

Currently, I am developing a research track in the ways the web, mobile devices, virtual and augmented reality seem to rescript our nervous system, and change the structure of our brain and challenge functions for empathy and decision-making. I am interested in developing new models of contemporary human online culture. For this purpose, I am working at the intersection of digital culture and neuroscience.

Themes:

Digital, cumulative culture & evolution
Information repertoires and everyday life
Media infrastructures
(Transmedia) narratives / storytelling
Urban, economic and governance alternative systems

Some keywords to investigate these themes:

Social life development (in individuals, over generations, communities); Digital polarization; Knowledge cultures; Information repertoires (perception and practices in transition); Narrativity; Co-creation; (More-than-human) Ecosystems; Predictive modeling; Niche construction; Active inference; Media studies; User innovation; ...

I welcome PhD + Postdoc enquiries from candidates wishing to pursue projects in the above subject areas.

Publications

2025

Evaluating a digital inclusion intervention for parents in poverty: results from qualitative research (2025)Journal of Social Intervention, 34(3), 3-23. Boerkamp, L. G. P., van Deursen, A. J. A. M., van Laar, E., van der Zeeuw, A. & van der Graaf, S.https://doi.org/10.54431/jsi.869Cocreating and Evaluating a Digital Inclusion Intervention for Parents in Poverty: Results from Qualitative Research (2025)[Contribution to conference › Poster] 2025 BMS Research Conference. Boerkamp, L. G. P., van Deursen, A. J. A. M., van Laar, E., van der Zeeuw, A., van der Graaf, S. & Lutkenhaus, R.Internet appropriation barriers in the lives of Dutch parents living in poverty: A qualitative study (2025)The Information society, 41(3), 195-208. Boerkamp, L. G. P., van der Zeeuw, A., van Deursen, A. J. A. M., van Laar, E. & van der Graaf, S.https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2025.2467031Climate change news and doomscrolling: An examination of influencing factors and psychological effects (2025)Acta psychologica, 255. Article 104925. Dominguez-Rodriguez, A., Apprich, F., Friehs, M. A., van der Graaf, S. & Steinrücke, J.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.104925Families-Share: Dataset of survey questions, final impact assessment (2025)[Dataset Types › Dataset]. Zenodo. Veeckman, C., Tsoumani, O. & Van Der Graaf, S.https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14906278Mobile Therapeutic Attention for Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia (m-RESIST) Solution for Improving Clinical and Functional Outcomes in Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia: Prospective, Multicenter Efficacy Study (2025)JMIR human factors, 12. Article e67659. Seppälä, J., Grasa, E., Alonso-Solís, A., Roldan-Bejarano, A., Haapea, M., Isohanni, M., Miettunen, J., Mendivelso, C., Almazán, C., Rubinstein, K., Caspi, A., Unoka, Z., Farkas, K., Reixach, E., Berdún, J., Usall, J., Ochoa, S., Corripio, I., Jääskeläinen, E., … Mentzas, G.https://doi.org/10.2196/67659Shaping support, side by side: A multi-step approach toward digital inclusion interventions for households in poverty (2025)[Thesis › PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT]. University of Twente. Boerkamp, L. G. P.https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036568920

2024

Digital Inclusion Support Needs of Households in Poverty: Insights From Interviews With Dutch Social Workers (2024)International journal of communication, 18, 3855-3872. Article 1932–8036/20240005. Boerkamp, L. G. P., van Deursen, A. J. A. M., van Laar, E., van der Zeeuw, A. & van der Graaf, S.https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/22587/4725Internet appropriation barriers in the lives of Dutch parents living in poverty: A qualitative study (2024)[Contribution to conference › Poster] Eu-SPRI Annual Conference 2024. Boerkamp, L. G. P., van der Zeeuw, A., van Deursen, A. J. A. M., van Laar, E. & van der Graaf, S.Exploring barriers to and outcomes of internet appropriation among households living in poverty: A systematic literature review (2024)SAGE Open, 14(1). Boerkamp, L. G. P., van Deursen, A. J. A. M., van Laar, E., van der Zeeuw, A. & van der Graaf, S.https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440241233047

Research profiles

Affiliated study programs

Courses academic year 2025/2026

Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.

Courses academic year 2024/2025

Current projects

Adapt! Preparing societies for future crises. Grant: NWO Gravitation (Zwaartekracht) Programme (2025 - 2035). AI.
Over Begrip en Wantrouwen: Samen werken aan een gelijkwaardige informatierelatie tussen burgers en overheid. Grant: Over Informatie Gesproken (2025-2026). Advisor.
VISAVIS: VISual and AI disinformation Verified with Information literacy and citizen Science. Grant: European Media and Information Fund (EMIF) (2024-2026). PI.
Modellen voor de wisselwerking tussen opinievorming, overheidscommunicatie en pandemieën (Models for the interplay of opinion formation, government communication and the spread of pandemics). Grant: ZonMw (2024-2026). Co-appplicant with PI Trapman and Mariëlle Stel.
OID, Observatory on Information and Democracy (2023 - present)

Current PhD supervision

Marouscha Scheffer; "Working through escalated crisis encounters" (UT, Adapt!, promotor, with Ellen Giebels, Kees van den Bos (UU) and Jacquelien van Stekelenburg (VU) (2025 - present)
Carina Veeckman; "The democratising effects of citizen science: engaging the public in scientific research" (imec-smit, Vrije Universiteit Brussels; promotor, with Leo Van Audenhove) (2022 - present)
Lilian Boerkamp; "A multi-step approach toward digital inclusion support for households in poverty" (UT, promotor, with Alexander van Deursen) (2022 - present)

Completed PhD supervision

Mehdi Montakhabi; "How can digitalization transform an institutionalized industry setting? Emergence and scale-up of business ecoystems in regulated industries"(imec-smit, Vrije Universiteit Brussels; co-promotor, with Pieter Ballon) (May 27, 2024)

Finished projects

Zoek de Verschillen! De rol van zoekcultuur in digitale polarisatie (Search for Differences: The role of search culture in digital polarisation). Grant: SIDN (2023-2025). PI.
Wegwijzer Digitaal Burgerschap (2023-2024), consultancy, NHL Stenden.
Digital Polarisation (Dutch Search Experience, partnership with Queensland University of Technology and AWS) (2022). Grant: UT. PI.
Prometheus (2021-2023): Grant: EIT-HEI Initiative (EC). Co-applicant with Sjoerd de Vries.
Sense-Data-Reflect (Vrije Universiteit Brussels; Global Minds, with University of the Western Cape) (2020 - 2022). PI.