Michelle Thorne (born 1985) is an

America The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

n-born,

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, Germany-based internet culture and

climate justice Climate justice is a type of environmental justice that focuses on the unequal impacts of climate change on marginalized or otherwise vulnerable populations. Climate justice seeks to achieve an equitable distribution of both the burdens of clima ...

activist Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...

who is known for leading community initiatives at

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

and before then with

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

. Her work focusses on knowledge sharing and on the social and planetary implications of new technologies. She is the Director of Strategy and Partnerships at th
Green Web Foundation
an organization focused on climate justice related to the Internet. She served 12 years with the Mozilla Foundation in a number of different roles, including in her final years as Mozilla's Sustainable Internet Lead. She is the editor of an award-winning online magazine
Branch

Early life and education

Thorne grew up in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

, Germany. She holds a BA ''summa cum laude'' in Critical Social Thought and

German Studies German studies is an academic field that researches, documents and disseminates German language, literature, and culture in its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies therefore often focus on German culture, German h ...

from

Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in South Hadley, Massachusetts, United States. It is the oldest member of the h ...

USA The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

, where she wrote an honors thesis on authorship, originality, and American copyright law.

Career

She worked as the international project manager for

from 2007 to 2011 and joined the

Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the Open-source software, open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...

as Global Event Strategist in 2011. She organized the Drumbeat Festival and the first several editions of the Mozilla Festival, which grew to be the largest annual gathering of the Mozilla community. She is co-author of the boo
''Understanding the Connected Home: Thoughts on living in tomorrow's connected home''
in 2016 (2nd edition) and was a co-founder o
Mozilla's Open IoT Studio
the same year, which later evolved into a PhD program on internet health with the University of Northumbria calle
OpenDoTT
in 2018. At Mozilla, she co-founded the magazin
Ding
in 2017 with Jon Rogers. She was a founding member of the Awesome Foundation Berlin, which is no longer active. In 2020, she founded the online magazin
Branch
to convene people and ideas on how to make the internet itself more sustainable for the planet. She is also a Senior Program Officer on Mozilla's Fellowships and Awards team.

Honors and awards

* 2021:

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in t ...

br>Award for Digital Humanity
for the online magazin
Branch

Bibliography

Books

* Thorne, Michelle; Bihr, Peter (2016)
''Understanding the Connected Home: Thoughts on living in tomorrow's connected home''
(2nd Edition)

Articles

* Taylor, Nick; Rogers, Jon; Clarke, Loraine; Skelly, Martin; Wallace, Jayne; Thomas, Pete; George, Babitha; Raj, Romit; Shorter, Mike; Thorne, Michelle
Prototyping Things: Reflecting on Unreported Objects of Design Research for IoT
(2021) * Jansen, Fieke; Thorne, Michelle (2020
Trustworthy AI and the Climate Crisis – Towards Better Policies in the EU
The State of Responsible IoT, Lancaster University * Rogers, Jon; Clarke, Loraine; Skelly, Martin; Taylor, Nick ; Thomas, Pete; Thorne, Michelle; Larsen, Solana; Odrozek, Katarzyna; Kloiber, Julia; Bihr, Peter; Jain, Anab; Arden, Jon; von Grafenstein, Max (2019
Our friends electric: Reflections on advocacy and design research for the voice enabled internet
Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMay 2019 Paper No.: 114 (Pages 1–13) * Thorne, Michelle (August 2014)
How You Run a Meeting Says a Lot About Your Values: Participatory Practices for Open Communities
OpenSym '14: Proceedings of The International Symposium on Open Collaboration * Thorne, Michelle et al. book sprint(2011)
An Open Web
'. FLOSS Manuals, ARTE Creative. * Thorne, Michelle; Cobcroft, Rachel (2009) Capturing the Commons: (Ways Forward for) The CC Case Studies Initiative" (PDF), Free Culture Research Workshop, Berkman Klein Center,

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

Speaking

Thorne regularly organizes events and gives talks about the commons, open design, and collaborative consumption. Her design challenges for sharable objects were cited by Bruce Sterling and she was interviewed in the film
The Future of Art
'.

References

External links

Michelle Thorne's blogMichelle Thorne's Twitter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thorne, Michelle 1985 births American activists Creative Commons Living people Mozilla people Articles containing video clips Mount Holyoke College alumni