Kohnstamm Lecture José van Dijck: 'Digital autonomy and education in times of AI and Big Tech'
31 March 2026
José van Dijck, Distinguished University Professor of Media and Digital Society at Utrecht University, delivered this year’s Kohnstamm Lecture on 27 March. In her lecture, entitled “Digital autonomy and education”, Van Dijck discussed how the rise of digital technologies in education leads to new forms of dependence on those technologies, and what this means for the autonomy of pupils, teachers and educational institutions. You can now read and watch the lecture.
Digital technology permeates education, from the calculator to AI chatbots such as Gemini and ChatGPT. Public education must teach pupils how to work with ICT tools that take over tasks, but this also increases dependency and may erode skills. In her lecture, Van Dijck explores what this dependency means for digital autonomy at different levels:
- Individual and professional: the autonomy of pupils and teachers in primary and secondary education.
- Institutional: the mbo college as a learning organisation in relation to technology providers.
- Infrastructural: the growing dependence on Big Tech in higher education and ways to strengthen the independence of education and research.
Interested in José van Dijck’s full story? The text and the recording of the lecture are now available!