honorific_prefix caption predecessor years_active home_town birth_place awards title article_title birth_date known_for image employer education name occupation alma_mater
dr. dr. michael lee wesch , digital ethnographer harald prins 2004-present fairbury , nebraska fairbury , nebraska 2008 and research universities , et al. . case/carnegie u.s. professor of the year for doctoral associate professor of cultural anthropology michael wesch
 june 22 , 1975 anthropology 2008 u.s. professor of the year award , digital ethnography , notable youtube videos , wesch_w-camera . jpg kansas state university doctorate , university of virginia , 2004 michael lee wesch associate anthropology professor kansas state university , 1997
michael wesch

michael lee wesch -lrb- born june 22 , 1975 -rrb- is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at kansas state university .
wesch 's work also includes media ecology and the emerging field of digital ethnography , where he studies the effect of new media on human interaction .
wesch is a cultural anthropologist and media ecologist exploring the effects of new media on human interaction .
he graduated summa cum laude from the kansas state university anthropology program in 1997 and returned as a faculty member in 2004 after receiving his phd in anthropology at the university of virginia .
there he pursued research on social and cultural change in melanesia , focusing on the introduction of print and print-based practices like mapping and census-taking in the remote mountain ok region of papua new guinea where he lived for a total of 18 months from 1999-2003 .
this work inspired wesch to examine the effects of new media more broadly , especially digital media .
also as a consequence of this trip , dr. wesch has gained some command of the tok pisin language , a primary lingua franca of papua new guinea .
to this end , wesch launched the digital ethnography working group , a team of undergraduates exploring human uses of digital technology .
coinciding with the launch of this group , wesch created a short video , `` web 2.0 ... the machine is us/ing us . ''
released on youtube on january 31 , 2007 .
it quickly became the most popular video in the blogosphere and was viewed over 10 million times .
wesch has won several awards for his work with video , including a wired magazine rave award and the john culkin award for outstanding media praxis from the media ecology association .
wesch 's videos are part of his broader efforts to pursue the possibilities of digital media to extend and transform the way ethnographies are presented .
wesch is also a multiple award-winning teacher , active in the development of innovative teaching techniques .
most notably , wesch has developed a highly acclaimed `` world simulation '' for large introductory classes in cultural anthropology .
on 20 november 2008 , case and the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching honored wesch as professor of the year .
currently he is the coordinator for the peer review of teaching project at kansas state university , part of a broader nationwide consortium of universities pursuing new ways to improve and evaluate student learning .
he is also working with the educause center for applied research on `` the tower and the cloud '' project , examining `` the question of how higher education institutions -lrb- the tower -rrb- may interoperate with the emerging network-based business and social paradigm -lrb- the cloud -rrb- . ''
