Felicitas Macgilchrist is Professor of Digital Education in Schools. Her research is at the intersection of digital culture and schools, with a particular focus on the social, political and cultural dimensions of digital media. Her research projects take critical, ethnographic and speculative approaches, e.g. in the ethnographic study of digital practices in schools (LernDiWa), design-based research in FabLabs (FaBuLoUS), with a critical utopian approach to education during the COVID-19 pandemic (ETIC) and in analysing change in textbook production in a digitally networked world (BM4). She is the principal investigator of the international research project Reconfigurations of Educational In/Equalities in a Digital World (RED), a member of the research board of the project Educational Ecosystems: Patterns, Practices and Services (EEPPS) and associated with a project on Speculative Social Science Fiction of Digitalisation in Higher Education in Finland.

Felicitas is co-editor of Learning, Media and Technology and the Palgrave Studies on Educational Media and occasionally advises policy makers at local, regional and national level as well as the EU and UNESCO on digital education issues. She is currently working with Kerstin Rabenstein and Nadine Wagener-Böck on a book about learning cultures and digital technologies. She is also thinking about how design justice can be placed at the centre of research and development of educational technologies, especially in 'AI' systems.

With a BSc from the University of Edinburgh, an MA from the Open University and a PhD in Cultural Studies from the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder, Felicitas was habilitated at the Technical University of Braunschweig in 2016. From 2012-2016, she led a junior research group at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI). From 2016 to 2023, she was Head of the Department of Media Transformations at the GEI and Professor of Media Research with a focus on educational media at the University of Göttingen. She co-founded Basement, a digital laboratory at the GEI that experiments with ideas for the classrooms of the future, and the interdisciplinary Leibniz ScienceCampus on Postdigital Participation. In 2022, she was appointed to the TU Berlin and Oldenburg. Since 2023, she has headed this specialist group -- Digital Education in Schools -- at the Institute of Educational Sciences in Oldenburg.

Publications

Complete list of publications can be found here:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Felicitas-Macgilchrist

Recent work on design (justice) and planetary futures

Macgilchrist, F., Jarke, J., Allert, H., & Cerratto Pargman, T. (2023). Designing postdigital futures: Which designs? Whose futures? Postdigital Science and Education, online first.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00389-y

Macgilchrist, F. (2021). Rewilding technology. On education. Journal for Research and Debate, 4(12). https://doi.org/10.17899/on_ed.2021.12.2

Suoranta, J., Teräs, M., Teräs, H., Jandrić, P., Ledger, S., Macgilchrist, F., & Prinsloo, P. (2021). Speculative Social Science Fiction of Digitalisation in Higher Education: From What Is to What Could Be. Postdigital Science and Education, online first. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00260-6

Recent work on AI, datafication and schools

Macgilchrist, F., Hartong, S., & Jornitz, S. (2023). Algorithmic datafication and schools: critical approaches in a growing field of research. In K. Scheiter & I. Gogolin (Eds.), Education for the digital future (Edition ZfE). Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37895-0_13

Bock, A., Breiter, A., Hartong, S., Jarke, J., Jornitz, S., Lange, A., & Macgilchrist, F. (Eds.). (2023). The datafied school. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38651-1

Williamson, B., Macgilchrist, F., & Potter, J. (2023). Re-examining AI, automation and datafication in education Learning, Media & Technology, 48(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2023.2167830

Recent ethnographic work on digital practices in schools

Proske, M., Rabenstein, K., Moldenhauer, A., Thiersch, S., Bock, A., Herrle, M., Hoffmann, M., Langer, A., Macgilchrist, F., Wagener-Böck, N., & Wolf, E. (Eds.). (2023). School and teaching in digital change. Approaches and results of reconstructive research. Klinkhardt. https://www.klinkhardt.de/verlagsprogramm/2550.html#

Rabenstein, K., Wagener-Böck, N., Macgilchrist, F., & Bock, A. (2022). Interferences in digital practices of delivering instructional tasks. Ethnographic observations in the pandemic. Social Sense, 297-316. https://doi.org/10.1515/sosi-2022-0016

Wagener-Böck, N., Macgilchrist, F., Rabenstein, K., & Bock, A. (2023). From automation to symmation: Ethnographic perspectives on what happens in front of the screen. Postdigital Science and Education, 5, 136-151. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00350-z

Recent commentaries on critical studies of education and technology

Macgilchrist, F. (2023). Discourse of digitality and pedagogy. In S. Assmann & N. Ricken (Eds.), Education and Digitality. Analyses - Discourses - Perspectives (pp. 47-71). Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30766-0_3

Macgilchrist, F. (2021). Theories of Postdigital Heterogeneity: Implications for Research on Education and Datafication. Postdigital Science and Education, 3(3), 660-667. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00232-w

Macgilchrist, F. (2021). What is 'critical' in critical studies of edtech? Three responses. Learning, Media & Technology, 46(3), 243-249. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2021.1958843

Recent work on postdigital participation

Weich, A., & Macgilchrist, F. (Eds.). (2023). Postdigital Participation in Education. Palgrave. https://link.springer.com/book/9783031380518

Poltze, K., Demuth, K., Eke, S., Moebus, A., & Macgilchrist, F. (2022). Experiences of participation. Reflections on participatory research and design processes. bildungsforschung, 2022(2), 1-14. doi. org/10.25539/bildungsforschung.v0i2.900