Dan McQuillan
After a Ph.D in Experimental Particle Physics, Dan worked with people with learning disabilities and as a mental health advocate. He founded Multikulti, a community-led multilingual website for asylum seekers & refugees which won a Global Ideas Bank Social Innovations Award. He joined Amnesty International as global web manager just as web 2.0 was emerging and established a new Directorate of E-communications. Identifying the web as a key terrain for human rights struggles, he headed Amnesty’s first delegation to the UN’s Internet Governance Forum. He has been Head of Digital for the Make Your Mark campaign, using social media to promote and support entrepreneurship, and Head of Digital at Media for Development, using participatory digital innovation as a way to empower marginalised communities. He a former director of The Open Rights Group.
In 2008 Dan co-founded Social Innovation Camp, which brings together ideas, people and digital tools to build web-based solutions to social problems in just 48 hours. Successful projects that started at Social Innovation Camp include Enabled by Design, The Good Gym and MyPolice. His current action-research includes leading Social Innovation Camps in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. He blogs about social technology and social change at internet.artizans.
Dan is convenor for the MA/MSc in Creating Social Media. He also teaches the interdisciplinary MA module in Social Media Campaigning and leads the undergraduate courses on Social Computing and Social Media.
