Michael Wesch

Dr. Michael Lee Wesch
Dr. Michael Lee Wesch, Digital Ethnographer
Born	June 22, 1975 Fairbury, Nebraska
Education	Doctorate, University of Virginia, 2004
Alma mater	Kansas State University, 1997
Occupation	Associate Anthropology professor
Years active	2004-present
Employer	Kansas State University
Known for	Anthropology, Digital Ethnography, notable YouTube videos, 2008 U.S. Professor of the Year award
Home town	Fairbury, Nebraska
Title	Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Predecessor	Harald Prins
Awards	2008 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities, et al.
Website	mediatedcultures.net

Michael Lee Wesch (born June 22, 1975) 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.