Michael Kurzmeier is a recent PhD graduate in Digital Humanities and Media Studies. His work revolves around the intersections of technology and society. His IRC-funded Phd thesis Political Expression in Web defacements investigates political expression through hacking and introduces novel methods for retrieval and analysis of this special kind of archived web material. In recent times, the idea of influencing political processes through online media has become widespread, yet little is known about the origins of activism on the web. Michael's work makes accessible a rich body of archived websites hacked for political purposes, it provides a methodology for retrieval and analysis of this material and it delivers an in-depth analysis of content, trends and actors over time.

Michael received a First Class Honours MA from the University of Tübingen, Germany for his thesis on Internet access provision through community-led networks. Other research interests include Free Soft- and Hardware, Community-led Networks, Internet histories and Web archiving.

Building on an interest in web archiving, Michael is a chair of the research methods work group at the Aarhus-led Web ARChive studies network researching web domains and events (WARCnet) as well as one of the founders of the Engaging with Web Archives (EWA) conference, Ireland's first dedicated web archiving conference.

Contact:

• https://twitter.com/MKRZMR
• https://mkrzmr.com/
• https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4925-5197
• https://scholar.social/web/@kurzmeier
• Email: MKurzmeier@ucc.ie