Steering Group
Dr Kostas Arvanitis
Theme Lead & Senior Lecturer in Museology
Kostas is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Museology, Institute for Cultural Practices, University of Manchester. His research interests cross the fields of museology, archaeology, cultural heritage, and digital media. His expertise lies in the area of Digital Heritage that includes the theory and practice of digital technology in museums, galleries and heritage sites. He is particularly interested in the museology of technology: the critical analysis of the use of digital, social and mobile media in museums for purposes of curation, interpretation, evaluation and audience engagement.
Professor Ricardo Climent
Professor of Interactive Music
Ricardo Climent is Professor of Interactive Music Composition at the University of Manchester, where he serves as director of the NOVARS Research Centre and as head of Composition. For the last few years his research has focused on the potential of game-audio, physics and graphic engines for compositional purposes, using ‘the aural’ as the primary source for navigation and exploration.
Dr Scott Midson
Lecturer in Liberal Arts
Scott Midson is a lecturer and researcher who specialises in the study of theology and posthumanism. Currently, he am researching how 'love' can be used to characterise and problematise human-machine relations. Details of this project can be found at the Lincoln Theological Institute, where he completed postdoctoral research.
Scott is also involved in setting up a Liberal Arts programme for The University of Manchester, based in the School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures (SALC). For more information on this programme, see here.
Dr Larissa Fast
Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian Studies
Larissa Fast is a scholar working at the intersection of the worlds of academia, policy, and practice. Her research addresses two fundamental problems: how best to protect civilians, particularly those who intervene in violent conflict, and how to make such intervention more effective, ethical, and responsive to local needs and circumstances.
Larissa has worked for both government and non-government agencies as a project manager, consultant, and analyst, and provided training to individuals and organizations in peacebuilding and conflict analysis.
Dr Maeve Olohan
Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies
Maeve Olohan is a Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies (CTIS), a leading research centre bringing together a very active group of scholars in translation and interpreting studies. Her research has always been highly interdisciplinary, and she is currently using approaches and methods from science and technology studies, practice theory and the history of science in studies of translation.
Dr Hannah Cobb
Senior Lecturer in Archaeology
Hannah Cobb is a Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Associate Director for eLearning and Teaching Innovation (SALC). Her research focuses on both contemporary archaeological practice, and the British Mesolithic. In the former, questions of pedagogy, training, equality and diversity are a central concern, in the latter her research examines the intersection between material culture, landscape and identity. In both areas, Hannah’s research is informed by posthuman feminism.
Dr Anita Greenhill
Senior Lecturer
Anita Greenhill is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Anita has an extensive research and publication list exploring cultural practices of online communities. She is currently researching the changing role of the city, local communities and their use of community news media in the digital age
Dr Joanna Taylor
Presidential Fellow
Joanna Taylor’s research focuses on literary geographies of the long nineteenth century, spatial poetics and environmental humanities. Her previous work includes the post of Senior Research Associate at Lancaster University on the Spatial Humanities project 'Geospatial Innovation in the Digital Humanities: A Deep Map of the English Lake District'. Her recent work continues to explore the uses of digital technologies in humanities research, particularly at the intersection between literary geographies and environmental studies.
John Hodgson
Head of Special Collections and Interim Associate Director (Curatorial Practices)
John is a member of the Library Executive Team with strategic responsibility for the development, promotion and care of the Library’s outstanding Special Collections of rare books, maps, manuscripts, archives and visual collections.
He leads a team of librarians, archivists, curators, conservators, imaging specialists, and experts in public and academic engagement. Many are based at The John Rylands Library, a research powerhouse and a major cultural institution. John also leads the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre, a unique library and archive specialising in the study of race, ethnicity and migration, located within Manchester Central Library.