Dr. Philippa Smith

PhD | Former Associate Professor, AUT | Visiting Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute | Former Executive Director, World Internet Project NZ | Digital Literacy & Misinformation Expert

Philippa Smith has spent her career studying what the internet is doing to society — not what we hoped it would do, but what it's actually doing. Her work covers digital literacy, misinformation, online harm, and socio-technical futures, fields that were niche when she started and are now among the most pressing questions in public life.

A former Associate Professor at AUT and Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, she has worked at the frontier of internet research for two decades. As former Executive Director of the World Internet Project NZ, she built the evidence base for understanding how New Zealanders engage with the internet and what that means for society, policy, and public discourse.

She now runs her own consultancy working with NGOs, universities, businesses, and social media companies on digital literacy and online safety, and is co-authoring a forthcoming book on digital disruption in New Zealand newsrooms. Her career has been driven by a single conviction: the conversation about technology must include the people it affects.