Henna Zamurd Butt is a scholar-artist and Assistant Professor at Columbia College Chicago. Her scholarship has addressed internet access, community networking, and internet management, combining ethnographic, participatory, and coalitional methods with curatorial and creative inquiry. She is the co-editor of Internet Decolonized with Professor Marianne Franklin (Oxford University Press), a collection of writing by activists, scholars and practitioners, due for release in 2026.

Henna is the founder of Technē Studio, where she focuses on feminist and decolonizing approaches to research on media, craft, and sociotechnical systems. Her artistic practice spans DJing, ceramics, and printmaking, with a through line of embodied, relational, gestural, and ephemeral approaches to making.

Previously, Henna was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago (2023 – 2026) working with the Internet Equity Initiative, to carry out a six site study across the Upper Midwest of the United States, examining community-based efforts to expand broadband connectivity in urban suburban, and rural localities. Her doctoral research was conducted at the Media, Communications & Cultural Studies department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and involved five years of engaged ethnography examining Majority World youth and feminist activism in internet governance.

Having taught in both the U.S. and U.K., Henna’s teaching spans a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses including: History of Networked Technologies and Digital Cultural Studies at King’s College London; Connected Curriculum and Global Media Studies at Goldsmiths; and Podcasting and Media Literacy at Columbia College Chicago.

BA History & Politics, School of Oriental & African Studies, London; MSc Global Politics, Royal Holloway, University of London; MSc Politics & Communication, London School of Economics & Political Science; PhD Media & Communication, Goldsmiths College, University of London.

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