#  Benjamin Mako Hill 

Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society

Assistant Professor at University of Washington

 

 

 



   ![Benjamin Mako Hill](/sites/g/files/omnuum8171/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/harvard-iqss/files/mako_commlead_2014-thumb_0_1.png?itok=ffgF0OVA) 

 



 

 laptop\_windows [Website](https://mako.cc) 

 

 



 

  
Benjamin Mako Hill is a social scientist, technologist, and activist. In all three roles, he works to understand why some attempts at [peer production](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_production)—like Wikipedia and Linux—build large volunteer communities while the vast majority never attract even a second contributor. He is an Assistant Professor in the [Department of Communication](http://www.com.washington.edu/)at the [University of Washington](http://www.washington.edu/) and a founding member of the [Community Data Science Collective](https://communitydata.cc/). He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in UW's [Department of Human-Centered Designed and Engineering](https://www.hcde.washington.edu/) as well as a Faculty Associate at the [Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society](http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/) and an affiliate at the [Institute for Quantitative Social Science](/)—both at [Harvard University](http://www.harvard.edu/). He has also been a leader, developer, and contributor to the free and open source software community for more than a decade as part of the [Debian](http://www.debian.org/) and [Ubuntu](http://www.ubuntu.com/) projects. He is the author of several best-selling technical books, a member of the [Free Software Foundation](http://www.fsf.org/) board of directors and an advisor to the [Wikimedia Foundation](http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/). Hill has a Masters degree from the [MIT Media Lab](http://www.media.mit.edu/) and a PhD from MIT in an interdepartmental program between the [Sloan School of Management](http://sloan.mit.edu/) and the Media Lab.

 

 

 





 

 

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