Dr. Natalie Dixon is founder & director of affect lab, a women-led creative studio and research practice based in Amsterdam.
Natalie is a storyteller, design researcher and creative place-maker harnessing technology and narrative to create more inclusive spaces. She has 20 years experience in digital storytelling with a focus on how powerful narrative tools can create more equitable and diverse public conversations. Her practice is characterised by a passion for lesser-heard stories forged through an upbringing in South Africa and her background in independent journalism. Her projects have two key goals: creating space for stories from the margins to be heard; and critically reflecting on the role of technology in community making. As part of affect lab, she holds space for international artists to collaborate and inspire networks of trust and connection. Alongside her work at affect lab, Natalie tutors students in the social design department at the Design Academy Eindhoven.
Latest Projects
2023 / Bloody Beautiful:
A movement for normalising conversations about menstruation & menopause.
2023-24 / Ctrl. Alt. Img. A creative intervention using generative AI to democratise image making.
2022-23 / A City Eating Itself (in less than 10 minutes). Raising urgent questions about how flash delivery services are shaping the social fabric of Amsterdam.
2019-ongoing / How to Tell a Herstory, a community based project that opens space for migration stories from the margins, told by women in conversation with machine learning.
Recent Publications
2022 (editor) Sensory Field Notes: Diary of a Dark Store Worker.
2021 Hybrid Spaces: Intimate Connections between online and physical audiences through gossip and dance. An affect lab publication.
2021 Friday Night in a Q-comm Warehouse on medium.com.
2021 What’s Up with WhatsApp?: A South African case study Institute of Network Cultures.
2020 Hey Honey: Are our domestic appliances gossiping behind our backs? And why does this even matter? on lacocinaarchive.info
2020 Why Should We Care About the Red Light District of Amsterdam? on Medium.com
2020 ‘Dick Tracy, Mad Men and Wall Street: A Brief [His]Story of Mobile Affect’ in Parole.cc
2019 ‘Refusing Shame and Inertia’ in Digital Culture & Society (December 2019) (PDF)
2018 Attached to My Phone: A Study of Affective Mooring in Mobile Practice (PDF)
2017 ‘Stranger-ness and Belonging in a Neighbourhood WhatsApp Group’ (2018) (PDF) in Open Cultural Studies – Special Issue on “Media and Emotions. The New Frontiers of Affect in Digital Culture”
Academic
>PhD from the Department of Media, Communications & Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
>MA in New Media & Culture from the Department of Media at the University of Amsterdam.
>BJourn (Bachelor of Journalism) from the Department of Journalism at Rhodes University, South Africa.