Working as a journalist for the newspaper ‘Het Nieuwsblad’, that’s how Karens professional life started. After several years at the national newsroom, she changed surroundings and became the communication officer of an organisation for microfinance. Communication and media have not only been the red line through her professional experience, but also through her studies, as she holds a Master Degree in Journalism (Erasmus Brussels, 2003) and a Master in Cultural Sciences (University Maastricht, 2001). In her thesis “It isn’t creative unless it sells. The merging of art and publicity”, Karen investigated the sultry relationship between artists and marketeers. Karen joined SMIT/IBBT in June 2008, where she is currently working at the European users research-project 'Citizen Media'.

Related projects

• Citizen Media

Publications

• Karen Torben Nielsen, An Jacobs, Bram Lievens & Jo Pierson (2008) Faking the real thing? Proxy technology assessment as a method for participative design. Paper presented at Participatory Design Conference 2008. Bloomington, 1-4 October.
• Bram Lievens, Karen Torben Nielsen, Jo Pierson & An Jacobs (2008) Proxy technology assessment as a multi-method approach for identifying social requirements of co-creative media. Paper presented at NordiCHI 2008 Workshop: New approaches to requirements elicitation. Lund, 20-22 October.