Dr A.M. Kanis (Marije)

Dr Marije Kanis is associate professor at the Digital Life centre at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Her goal is to understand and create digital (smart) solutions for public wellbeing.

Her work is about people and their needs, crafting and evaluating interactive systems, realizing futuristic scenarios, and challenging how we understand and experience interactivity. Her work is multidisciplinary and builds on interaction design, critical making, positive psychology, ubiquitous and social computing. Her overarching goal is to develop empowering, physical and playful solutions for positive impact and happy futures.

Marije Kanis’ research interests lie at the intersection where human-computer interaction meets the physical world. Central to her research are uncovering human needs and making the invisible visible/physical. Her project ‘Revealing design (Zichtbaar slimmer)’ focuses on data physicalization for the 21st-century skills; critical thinking, creativity and collaboration. Her work on the ‘FAIR: no words but data’ and Digital Trust Infrastructure projects also focus on data literacy and finding more transparent ways to engage with data and technology. On top of that, she explores creative and participatory research methods for wellbeing in times of physical distance in the Co-Well and Co-Prodigy projects.

In 2000, she earned her Interaction Design degree (Cum Laude) from the HKU Utrecht School of the Arts, in The Netherlands. She also completed a Master in Computer Science from Leiden University, NL. In 2010, she obtained a PhD from Brunel University (UK) on the topic of Positive expressive technologies for social wellness. More recently, she completed the course ‘How to make almost everything’ on Principles and applications of digital fabrication, from the international Fab academy that originated from the MIT.

Marije has held positions at Electronic Arts (GB), HKU Utrecht School of the Arts and MIT’s Media Lab Europe in the Human Connectedness group. She has more than 20 years of experience in the field of interactive art, media & technology. Her work has been published and exhibited worldwide, such as at the International Film festival 1999, E-Culture fair 2003, Journal of Personal & Ubiquitous Computing 2009, JMIR Mental Health 2019 and ACM CHI 2004-2021.