Personal details
- Name
- Professor Marcus Foth
- Position(s)
- Professor
Faculty of CI, Education & Social Justice,
School of Design - Discipline *
- Design Practice and Management, Information Systems, Communication and Media Studies
- Phone
- +61 7 3138 8772
- m.foth@qut.edu.au
- Location
- View location details (QUT staff and student access only)
- Identifiers and profiles
-
- Qualifications
-
PhD (Queensland University of Technology), MA (Queensland University of Technology), BCompSc(Hons) , BMultimedia (Griffith University), JP(Qual.) Qld
- Professional memberships
and associations - Australian Computer Society (ACS): Fellow (FACS) and Certified Professional (CP)
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI): Senior Member (MACM Sr)
- European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET): Member
- Keywords
-
Urban Informatics, Smart Cities, Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Sustainability, Urban Computing, Ubiquitous Computing, Community Engagement, Design, Blockchain
Biography
Marcus Foth is Professor of Urban Informatics in the QUT Design Lab, Faculty of Creative Industries, Education, and Social Justice, at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. He is also an Honorary Professor in the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark.
Marcus’ research brings together people, place, and technology. His current research foci include: urban media and geoprivacy; data care in smart cities; digital inclusion and participation; blockchain and food supply chains, and; sustainability and more-than-human futures.
His research directly coincides with a historic moment: Cities now house most of the world’s population as well as both major physical and digital infrastructure. Marcus founded the Urban Informatics Research Lab in 2006. Ahead of their time and well before the term “smart cities” became popular, he championed a new field of research: Urban informatics examines people creating, applying and using information and communication technology and data in cities and urban environments.
For two decades, Marcus has been at the helm of ubiquitous computing and human-computer interaction (HCI) research into interactive digital media, screen, mobile and smart city applications. This work has been adopted by industry (e.g., smart city programs by McKinsey, Intel, CISCO), and universities (e.g., urban informatics courses at NYU, University College London, Warwick, Northeastern). His leadership in establishing the field was recognised by the Australian Computer Society inducting Marcus as a Fellow in 2017 for ‘a sustained and distinguished contribution to the field of computer science’ and by the Australian and New Zealand Governments, which included urban informatics as a new field of research in their 2020 Standard Research Classification.
In 2021, the Australian Government again recognised Marcus’ distinguished research leadership by appointing him to the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts.
Marcus has made significant contributions to knowledge including more than 200 peer-reviewed publications. His h-index is 50 with 8,000+ citations (Google Scholar). His major publications have often been field-defining. For instance, his 2009 Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics demonstrates the merits of a transdisciplinary research approach integrating the physical and digital aspects of cities.
The outputs of Marcus’ research have received many awards. For example, the Rapid Analytics Interactive Scenario Explorer Toolkit received the 2021 National Award for Cutting Edge Research of the Planning Institute of Australia for significantly accelerating the calculation of value uplift in linear infrastructure projects such as rail networks. His BeefLedger project was recognised as a 2020 Good Design Australia Award winner twice: in the commercial services category and for design strategy, for demonstrating tangible benefits and impact of blockchain and smart contract applications for industry. Nominated by the Smart Cities Council Australia / NZ, Marcus was awarded ICT Researcher of the Year 2017 (Gold Disruptor) by the Australian Computer Society.
Marcus has made substantial contributions to academic service, including being conference chair of OZCHI 2009, Communities & Technologies 2011, and ACM SIGCHI Designing Interactive Systems 2016. He is an active reviewer, associate chair, and editorial board member for various conferences and journals. In recognition of his service, he received the 2018 Publons Peer Review Award (cross-field), which honours the top 1% of reviewers.
Marcus is an ACM Distinguished Speaker and has been giving invited keynote talks and presentations at international conferences and leading research institutions, including Aalto University Helsinki, Aarhus University, Harvard University, IT University of Copenhagen, KAIST, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, MIT, Politecnico di Milano, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Tsinghua University, University of Oulu, University of Oxford.
Teaching
Research Training and Supervision of Research Students
Experience
Member of Editorial and Advisory Boards
- Adaptive Environments (Springer book series)
- AI & Society – Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication (Springer)
- Big Data & Society (Sage)
- Computers, Environment and Urban Systems (Elsevier)
- Journal of Community Informatics
Conference Chair
- Conference chair: ACM SIGCHI Designing Interactive Systems (DIS’16), Brisbane
- Conference chair: 5th International Conference on Communities and Technologies, C&T 2011, Brisbane
- Conference chair: OZCHI 2009, Melbourne: 21st Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (CHISIG) of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFESA)
- Academic program chair: Making Links conferences, 2007 – 2010
- Co-chair: Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme 2009, Brisbane
- Invited faculty member: Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School, Boston, 2007
Committee Positions
- ACM SIGCHI Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) – steering committee member 2016 onwards
- Open UBI Oulu, University of Oulu, Finland – scientific advisory board member 2013 onwards
- UrbanIxD, Europe – scientific advisory board member 2013 – 2014
- Queensland Open Data Forum – steering committee member 2013
- Queensland Government Precinct Redevelopment – community reference group member 2013
- Elected Member of the executive board: Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), 2007 – 2009
Jury and Assessment Duties
- Australian Computer Society (ACS) Queensland ICT Awards – chair of the judging panel: Green ICT (Corporate), 2009, 2010
- Australian Research Council – international reader and ERA reviewer
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), UK – grant ssessor
- European Science Foundation (ESF) – grant assessor
- Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Ministry of Education and Science, Portugal – grant assessor
- iAwards Australia – judge 2011, 2012, 2013
- K. U. Leuven (Research Council), Belgium – grant assessor
- Ministry of Science and Innovation (MSI), New Zealand – grant assessor
- NWO Council for the Social Sciences, The Netherlands – grant assessor
- OZCHI 24h Student Design Challenge – judge 2009, 2011, 2012
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) – grant assessor
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) – grant assessor
- United Arab Emirates University, College of IT Promotion Committee – external reviewer
- University of Lugano (Research Commission), Switzerland – grant assessor
- VicHealth – grant assessor
- Vienna Business Agency, Austria – jury member of Wiennovation – Creative Industries Vienna 2002
Review Experience
Journals
- Ain Shams Engineering Journal (Elsevier)
- Australian Planner (Routledge)
- Computers in Entertainment (ACM)
- Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (Sage)
- Digital Creativity (Routledge)
- Environment and Behavior (Sage)
- Environment and Planning (Pion)
- Fibreculture Journal (OHP)
- Future Internet (MDPI)
- Futures (Elsevier)
- Information, Communication & Society (Routledge)
- Information Systems Journal (Blackwell)
- Interacting with Computers (Oxford University Press)
- International Journal of Communication (USC Annenberg Press)
- International Journal of Cultural Studies (Sage)
- International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (Elsevier)
- Journal of Consumer Culture (Sage)
- Journal of Location Based Services (Taylor & Francis)
- Journal of Planning Literature (Sage)
- Journal of Services Marketing (Emerald)
- Journal of the American Planning Association (Taylor & Francis)
- Journal of Urban Technology (Routledge)
- Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy (MIA) (University of Queensland)
- New Media & Society (Sage)
- Pervasive and Mobile Computing (Elsevier)
- Pervasive Computing (IEEE)
- Planning Practice and Research (Routledge)
- Policy & Internet (Berkeley Electronic Press)
- Technological Forecasting & Social Change (Elsevier)
- Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM)
- Visual Communication (Sage)
Conferences
- Aarhus 2015: The fifth decennial Aarhus conference – program committee 2015
- Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Internet Research (IR)
- Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA)
- British HCI
- Communities & Technologies (C&T) – program committee 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, conference chair 2011, program committee 2015, 2017
- Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
- Cumulus: Conference of the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media – program committee 2015
- Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) – program committee 2010, program committee associate chair 2012, 2014, conference chair 2016
- Engaging Data: First International Forum on the Application and Management of Personal Electronic Information, MIT, Boston – program committee 2009
- Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)
- Interact: IFIP TC13 Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
- International Symposium on Pervasive Displays (PerDis) – program committee 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017
- Media Architecture Biennale – program committee 2012, 2014
- MediaCities – program committee 2013, 2015
- Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM) – program committee 2011, 2012, 2013
- Mobile HCI
- Online Deliberation (OD), Leeds, UK – program committee 2010
- OZCHI: Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (CHISIG) of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFESA) – social chair 2008, conference chair 2009
- Participatory Design Conference (PDC)
- Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp)
- Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI) – program committee associate chair 2014, 2015
Workshops
- Aesthetic Intelligence (AxI) workshop at the International Joint Conference on Ambient Intelligence (AmI) – program committee 2011, 2012, 2013
- City Labs workshop at the 6th International Conference on Social Informatics(SocInfo) – program committee 2014
- Cloud Computing, HCI, & Design: Sustainability and Social Impacts workshop at CloudCom 2010 – program committee 2010
- Collaboration: Human-Centered Issues & Interactivity Design workshop at Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS) – program committee 2011
- Community Practices and Locative Media workshop at Mobile HCI 2009 – program committee 2009
- Digital Cities workshop at the Communities & Technologies (C&T) conference – co-chair 2007, 2009, program committee 2011, 2013, co-chair 2015
- Do-It-Yourself Networking: An Interdisciplinary Approach workshop at MobiSys 2015– program committee
- People Centered Smart Territories: Design, Learning and Analytics workshop at the Smart City Exhibition 2013 – program committee
- PD-Apps: Workshop on Developing Applications for Pervasive Display Networks at the International Symposium on Pervasive Displays (PerDis) – program committee 2014
- Personalization in Mobile Applications (PeMA) workshop at ACM Recommender Systems (RecSys) – program committee 2011
- Pervasive Urban Applications (PURBA) workshop at UbiComp – program committee 2011, 2012, 2013
- Social and Mobile Media workshop at the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME) – program committee 2013
- Social Car workshop at AutomotiveUI – program committee 2012, 2013
- Social Connections in the Urban Space (SocialUrb) workshop at SocialCom – program committee 2011
- Symposium on Social and Community Intelligence (SCI) at UbiComp – program committee 2011
- Symposium on Urban Informatics: Exploring Smarter Cities – program committee
- Urban Internet of Things workshop at Internet of Things – program committee 2010
- When the City Meets the Citizen (WCMCW) workshop at the 7th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) – program committee 2012, 2013
Publications
- Clarke R, Heitlinger S, Light A, Forlano L, Foth M, DiSalvo C, (2019) More-than-human participation: design for sustainable smart city futures, Interactions p60-63
- Yigitcanlar T, Foth M, Kamruzzaman M, (2019) Towards post-anthropocentric cities: Reconceptualizing smart cities to evade urban ecocide, Journal of Urban Technology p147-152
- Foth M, (2018) Participatory urban informatics: Towards citizen-ability, Smart and Sustainable Built Environment p4-19
- Foth M, Caldwell G, (2018) More-than-human media architecture, Proceedings of the 4th Media Architecture Biennale Conference p66-75
- Frauenberger C, Foth M, Fitzpatrick G, (2018) On scale, dialectics, and affect: pathways for proliferating participatory design, Proceedings of the 15th Participatory Design Conference: Full Papers - Volume 1 p1-13
- Foth M, Brynskov M, (2016) Participatory action research for civic engagement, Civic media: Technology, design, practice p563-580
- Choi J, Foth M, Hearn G, (2014) Eat, cook, grow: mixing human-computer interactions with human-food interactions, The MIT Press
- Mallan K, Foth M, Greenaway R, Young G, (2010) Serious playground: Using Second Life to engage high school students in urban planning, Learning, Media and Technology p203-225
- Foth M, Paulos E, Satchell C, Dourish P, (2009) Pervasive computing and environmental sustainability: Two conference workshops, IEEE Pervasive Computing p78-81
- Foth M, Adkins B, (2006) A Research Design to Build Effective Partnerships between City Planners, Developers, Government and Urban Neighbourhood Communities, Journal of Community Informatics p116-133
For more publications by this staff member, visit QUT ePrints, the University's research repository.
Awards
Awards and recognition
- Type
- Appointment to State/National/International Reference Group or Government Committees
- Reference year
- 2018
- Details
- Appointed Peer-to-Peer Economy and Short-term Letting Industry Reference Group Member by the Queensland Department of Tourism, Major Events, Small Business and the Commonwealth Games. The purpose of the group is to discuss whether the state and local governments should intervene in P2P short-term letting in Queensland. This includes the positive and negative impacts of intervention at the local or state levels, as well as whether governments should play a role in fostering the development of the P2P sector.
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2017
- Details
- Inducted as ACM Distinguished Speaker: The Distinguished Speakers Program is an outreach program of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) that brings distinguished speakers from academia, industry, and government together to give presentations to ACM chapters, members, and the greater IT community in a variety of venues and formats.
- Type
- Fellowships
- Reference year
- 2017
- Details
- The Australian Computer Society (ACS) made me a fellow for "a sustained and distinguished contribution to the field of computer science. Foth is the international thought leader who coined the term urban informatics - now adopted by universities and industry worldwide. Foth's work makes clear how academic research can successfully respond to societal challenges."
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2017
- Details
- Nominated by the Smart Cities Council Australia / New Zealand, I was shortlisted and won the Gold Disruptor Award in the ICT Researcher of the Year category of the ACS Digital Disruptors Awards 2017. The awards honour the efforts of Australia¿s ICT professionals, recognising the teams and individuals at the forefront of digital disruption.
- Type
- Appointment to State/National/International Reference Group or Government Committees
- Reference year
- 2017
- Details
- Appointed Infrastructure Innovation Task Force Member. The State Infrastructure Plan (SIP) is an infrastructure strategy and program that underpins economic growth, supports jobs and creates long-term prosperity for all Queenslanders. The Infrastructure Innovation Taskforce relates to the SIP implementation action 14: to establish a joint industry-government infrastructure innovation taskforce.
- Type
- Advisor/Consultant for Industry
- Reference year
- 2017
- Details
- Appointed to the Built Environment Task Force for Smart Cities by the Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand (SSCANZ). The Built Environment Task Force provides a forum to advance smart cities dialogue and action in city building processes, and better understand the opportunities at the intersection of technology, intelligent design, and the built and social environments. This in turn will build greater opportunities for the successful procurement and deployment of smart cities solutions that are critical to achieving sustainable city outcomes.
- Type
- Advisor/Consultant for Industry
- Reference year
- 2017
- Details
- Appointed advisory board member by BlueChilli CityConnect smart city startup accelerator and incubator
- Type
- Visiting Professorships/Fellowships
- Reference year
- 2016
- Details
- Appointed Honorary Professor in the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2013
- Details
- Marcus has received a Queensland Young Tall Poppy Science Award 2013 which recognises him as one of the state's best young scientists, combining world-class research with a passionate commitment to communicating science.
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2011
- Details
- Foth was inducted by the planning, design and development site Planetizen to the world's top 25 leading thinkers and innovators in the field of urban planning and technology.
Research projects
Grants and projects (Category 1: Australian Competitive Grants only)
- Title
- Fostering digital participation through Living Labs in regional and rural Australian communities
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP130100469
- Start year
- 2014
- Keywords
- digital citizenship;rural & regional;digital literacy
- Title
- Eat, Cook, Grow: Ubiquitous Technology for Sustainable Food Culture in the City
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP100100232
- Start year
- 2010
- Keywords
- Human Computer Interaction;Urban Informatics;Ubiquitous Computing;Mobile Social Interaction
- Title
- Remembering the Past, Imagining the Future: Embedding Narrative and New Media in Urban Planning
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP0882274
- Start year
- 2008
- Keywords
- Community Engagement;Community Informatics;New Media;Urban Planning
- Title
- Swarms in Urban Villages: New Media Design to Augment Social Networks of Residents in Inner-City Developments
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP0776341
- Start year
- 2008
- Keywords
- Social Networking Systems;New Media;Human Computer Interaction;Community Informatics;Interaction Design;Urban Neighbourhoods
Supervision
Current supervisions
- Radical Placemaking: Designing an Experimental Placemaking Toolkit for Social Justice
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Glenda Caldwell - Enabling People-Plant Engagement in Office Buildings Through Technologically Mediated Environments
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Yasu Santo - A new perspective of the design of pedestrian bridges, Inspired by Baudelaire's Flâneur
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Mirko Guaralda, Associate Professor Markus Rittenbruch - Intermediation as Practice: Joining the Dots Between Community, Culture and Commerce
Professional Doctorate, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Greg Hearn
Completed supervisions (Doctorate)
- The Right to the Digital City: The Role of Urban Imaginaries in Participatory Citymaking (2019)
- Connecting to Self, Community, and the Environment: Energy Conservation and Well-being in Households with Low Income (2018)
- Risky Gadgets to the Rescue - Reframing In-Car Technology Use as Task Engagement (2018)
- The Mundane Lives of Households: A Design Exploration into Everyday Resource Sufficiency in the Home (2018)
- Participatory Data Analytics: Designing Visualisation and Composition Interfaces for Collaborative Sensemaking on Large Interactive Screens (2017)
- Street Interventions for Change: Designing with Grassroots Organisations (2017)
- Influencing Public Transport Passenger Experiences via Mobile Social Services (2016)
- Media Architecture: Facilitating the Co-creation of Place (2016)
- Growing Food in the City: A Study across Interaction Design and Urban Agriculture (2015)
- Mobile Interaction Design Approaches for Reducing Domestic Food Waste (2015)