Media as historical subjects in culture and humanities research

In my research I examine media as historical subjects, by investigating the interplay of materiality, technology and culture. Looking at a broad range of technologies, such as microfilming, sound recording and photocopying, I am exploring a number of different perspectives and eras from which to reflect on the nature of media change. Moving to the digital era, my research seeks to understand computational culture - and its social, political, and ethical ramifications - in historical and materialist context by reflecting or incorporating past technologies, practices, and ideologies. By working at the intersection of Media History, Cultural History and Digital Humanities, I am researching how technologies have been integrated into society, culture and research practice at different moments in time, by emphasising the dependence of particular technologies on the material circumstances within which they were developed and used and on the cultural affordances they have enabled. My research both employs technology in the pursuit of humanities research and subjects technology to humanistic questioning and interrogation, often simultaneously.

Computational archival science and born-digital archives

My everyday digital humanities work focuses on computational archival science, data-driven research, information architecture, data modelling and analysis and data visualisation of diverse archival content. Through various cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary collaborations and projects, I am exploring the application of advanced computational methods to large-scale, complex and diverse archival resources focusing on their processing, documentation, analysis, linking, storage, long-term preservation, and access. Not surprisingly, emerging digital technologies, such as AI and ML, and big data offer an even more challenging framework for critical archival thinking, forcing notions of representation, access, power, memory and narrative to be re-shaped and negotiated by computational processes and tools. My current research focuses on born-digital archival assets, from their preservation, processing to access, with an emphasis on their fragile - and often complex - materiality.

Open knowledge and data in the making

My cross- and interdisciplinary interest and expertise centres on the changing materialities of memory, knowledge and information making, especially in the digital era, and their related practices and economics. Through my everyday digital humanities academic life I am experimenting with hands-on-practice and critical reflection on the very nature of the data embedded in various media formats and its further digital representation and processing. By trying to comprehensively approach knowledge creation, I am also tracing the epistemological and methodological transitions in humanities scholarship and scholarly communication. I am a keen advocate of full- diamond and responsible Open Access and an active supporter of creative ways for knowledge exchange, transfer and collaboration that will ensure that the communication and distribution of research, knowledge and data are F.A.I.R., ethical, engaging and inclusive.

Inclusive and reflective digital pedagogy

Through my formal teaching training (PGCertHE, Carpentries Instructor) as well as my research-informed, inclusive, flexible and accessible teaching ethos, in my pedagogy I seek to communicate and promote creative uses of digital technology to the arts, humanities, and the wider cultural heritage field as well as a critical reflection regarding their application for remediating the human past and memory. I am actively organising and delivering various workshops and courses via innovative training platforms, enabling open and distance learning (Carpentries, Programming Historian), for interdisciplinary, multicultural and multilingual audiences, I am experienced while flexible in designing, structuring, adjusting and delivering lessons, while incorporating innovative teaching methods and current approaches on learning, assessment and feedback provision.

Selective Publications