Dr Margie Cheesman is a Lecturer in Digital Economy at the Department of Digital Humanities.

Margie’s work examines digitalisation projects in humanitarian aid, asylum, and welfare, as a way of understanding the contested horizons of global governance. She uses ethnographic methods to engage with elite and marginalised groups, from aid organisations to asylum seekers and refugees. Her latest studies have investigated the social and political implications of web3 tech, including digital identity and currency experiments.

Margie is currently working on her book about the digital transformation of financial aid, which is based on fieldwork with refugee women, blockchain developers, and United Nations agencies in Jordan. Her new research project, Shadows of the Digital Economy, is about the informal and subversive ways in which people (especially non-citizens) maintain their livelihoods. She is Co-Investigator on the Identity and Migration research project (Caribou Digital/Bosch Foundation-funded), an investigation into emerging models of digital identity management in migration governance.

Margie completed her PhD at the Oxford Internet Institute in 2022. She has worked as Assistant Editor of the journal Big Data & Society and is a Research Affiliate at the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy. She is a member of research collectives such as the European Association of Anthropologists (EASA) Digital Anthropology and Anthropology of Economy networks, the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN), and STS-MigTec. Margie also works with the grassroots organisations Swansea Asylum Support and West London Welcome.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• Digital Anthropology
• Economic Anthropology
• Science and Technology Studies
• Migration/Critical Border Studies
• Humanitarianism/Development Studies

Teaching

Margie’s teaching bridges macro and micro approaches to digital economies and cultures. She brings geopolitical concerns into dialogue with everyday lived experiences. Margie particularly welcomes dissertation students interested in exploring the connections between digital technologies and any of the following: ethnographic and co-produced research approaches, money and finance, identification, infrastructure, labour and gender, social protection and welfare, asylum, borders and migration, humanitarian and development aid.

During office hours, students can pre-book a time in advance.

Expertise and Public Engagement

Margie has led multiple open access reports investigating the risks and harms of digital innovations targeting low-income groups and non-citizens. Her public interest work builds evidence to challenge contemporary forms of discrimination, oppression, and exploitation—for example, associated with digital currency experiments, biometric checks, and gig work platforms. Through press engagements and advocacy work (UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Open Migration, Reuters, BBC, CNN) she has advanced critical agendas for research and action on digital rights.

Selected Publications

• Cheesman, M. 2024. Conjuring a Blockchain Pilot: Ignorance and Innovation in Humanitarian Aid. Geopolitics, 1-28. DOI:10.1080/14650045.2024.2389284.
• Cheesman, M. 2024. ‘Digital Humanitarianism: Interfaces, Infrastructures, and Countercurrents’, London Review of International Law, DOI:10.1093/lril/lrae003.
• Mahmoudi, M. and M. Cheesman. 2024. ‘Chapter 23: On Donkeys and Blockchains’, in M. Aizeki, M. Mahmoudi, and C. Schupfer (eds), Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 161-169.
• Cheesman, M. 2022. ‘Blockchain, Sovereignty, and Humanitarian Payments’, Geopolitics 28(3), 1362-1397, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2047468.
• Weitzberg, K., M. Cheesman, A. Martin, E. Schoemaker. 2021. ‘Between surveillance and recognition: Rethinking digital identity in aid’, Big Data & Society 8(1), DOI: 10.1177/20539517211006744.
• Cheesman, M. 2020. ‘Self-sovereignty for refugees? The contested horizons of digital identity’, Geopolitics 27(1), 134-159, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2020.1823836.
• Gillespie, M., Osseiran, S. and Cheesman, M. 2018. ‘Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances’, Social Media + Society 4(1), DOI: 10.1177/2056305118764440.