Dr Margie Cheesman

Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Digital Economy at King’s College London and Research Affiliate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge

I am an anthropologist specialising in the social and political dimensions of emerging technology.

My work examines how technologies like blockchain are designed, used, and adapted in sensitive environments. This includes humanitarian aid, migration management, and financial inclusion initiatives led by states and development actors - from Jordan and Kenya to Germany and the UK.

I use ethnographic methods to explore technological change through both lived experiences and institutional practices. My public interest research contributes to ongoing debates about contemporary forms of inequality and exclusion, and how they can be challenged.

Current projects

1. Blockchain and Aid: My upcoming book offers the first comprehensive ethnography on blockchain's deployment in humanitarian crisis zones. A major human experiment with new financial technology reveals the profound priority clash between aid managers, frontline humanitarians, and refugees.
2. Digital Sovereignty: I am co-Lead Investigator on an international research project analysing how emerging technologies reshape social and political boundaries. Funded by the Bosch Foundation, we focus on digital IDs, migration management systems, and the vulnerable groups navigating them.
3. The Digital Grey Zone:Digital platforms—from crypto to gig work—are creating new livelihood opportunities alongside emerging risks for low income groups and non-citizens, operating in spaces that blur conventional economic arrangements. My latest research and advocacy advances understandings of informal economic activity. This involves an Economy and Society special issue co-edited with Dr Andreas Hackl.

Academic/public interest writing

• Conjuring a blockchain pilot: Ignorance and innovation in humanitarian aid
• Self-sovereignty for refugees? The contested horizons of digital identity
• Web3 and communities at risk: Myths and problems with current experiments
• The identity issue: Proxy IDs in Kenya's online economy

Teaching

I am currently the programme lead for the Digital Economy Master's Degree at King's College London.

Passion projects

Twinspiration:What does it mean to be human in an era of genetic and digital replication? With my twin, Dr Rosa Cheesman, we blend our knowledge from social and biological sciences to examine twinship as a lens on past, present, and future understandings of ‘who we are’.