Speakers | Making Meaning

Kirsten Wright

Kirsten Wright is the Program Manager, Find & Connect web resource, University of Melbourne. Prior to this she held multiple roles at Victoria University, including University Archivist and Manager, Records & Archives Services. Kirsten holds a BA in history and politics and a Master of Information Management and Systems, both from Monash University. She has previously published and presented on topics including tattoos and the archive, ghost signs, archives and power, and historical language and archival description.

Mauricio Giraldo

Mauricio Giraldo is a designer, developer, tinkerer, and artist. He is the 2019 DX Lab Fellowship winner at State Library of New South Wales to develop improved discovery of the collection in the SLNSW catalogue using machine-generated metadata.

Mauricio has worked in digital humanities for the past eight years, first as part of The New York Public Library’s NYPL Labs innovation unit dedicated to finding new ways of bringing the Library’s collections to the public using digital technology. Later, at the Digital Public Library of America as Principal Interaction Designer, where he experimented with using machine learning to improve collection usage and discovery.

Prior to NYPL and DPLA, Mauricio spent twelve years designing and developing interaction design projects for a wide range of commercial, academic, private and public institutions throughout Latin America. He lectured for six years at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia in courses that introduced designers to web development and creative coding.

Chris McDowall

Chris McDowall is a geographer and data specialist. He has worked variously as a cartographer, environmental scientist and manager at the University of Auckland, Manaaki Whenua — Landcare Research and the National Library of New Zealand / DigitalNZ.

Chris has created interactive data visualisations for media organisations. His animated maps and visualisations have been exhibited at the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the National Library of New Zealand. The common thread through his career is a desire to make the nation’s data easier to find and understand.

With co-author, Tim Denee, Chris created We Are Here: An Atlas of Aotearoa — a beautiful and timely collection of maps, graphics and essays that explore New Zealand’s landscapes, climate, places, populations, economy and culture.

Dr Geoff Hinchcliffe

Dr Geoff Hinchcliffe is a founding member of the ANU School of Art and Design’s innovative new design program and Associate Dean Education in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU). Geoff’s research focuses on enlivening data and digital collections through visualisation, interface and interaction design. Novel representation, exploration and discovery are core to his web-based works, with audience contribution and participation being key areas of current interest. His research results in both theoretical and applied outputs, ranging from the practical, to the experimental, playful and occasionally provocative

Mitchell Whitelaw

Mitchell Whitelaw is an academic, writer and maker with interests in digital design and culture, data practices, more-than-human worlds and digital collections. His teaching and research takes up data and code to seek out moments of insight and delight that intensify our engagement with a complex world. His work has appeared in journals including Leonardo, Digital Creativity, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and Senses and Society.

He has worked with institutions including the State Library of NSW, the State Library of Queensland, the National Archives and the National Gallery of Australia, developing "generous" interfaces to their digital collections. His current research investigates environmental and biodiversity visualisation and digital design for a more-than-human world. Mitchell is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at the Australian National University.

Dr Kerry Raymond

Dr Kerry Raymond is a retired computer science professor and researcher. In retirement she writes Queensland content for Wikipedia and provides free Wikipedia talks and training to groups across Australia. She is a member of Wikimedia Australia, Queensland Family History Society and the Queensland Women’s Historical Association.

Des Crump 

Des has held the role of Indigenous Languages coordinator at the State Library since 2009 where he has coordinated and supported activities under the State Library’s Indigenous languages strategy.  This work entails researching the State Library collections for language materials as well as conducting research and training workshops to enhance capacity of community to manage their language revival.  In this 10 year period, State Library has worked with 105 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language groups across Queensland. During the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages, Des was actively involved in IYIL2019 planning, including co-curating the Indigenous languages exhibition Spoken.

Ashley Dennis-Henderson

Ashley Dennis-Henderson completed a Bachelor of Mathematical Science (Advanced) at the University of Adelaide in 2018 and is currently undertaking a Master of Philosophy in applied mathematics. Her project involves investigating the use of natural language processing techniques applied to historical war diaries.

Seth Ellis

Seth Ellis is Senior Lecturer in the Interactive Media program at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, where he is also the Program Leader of the Master of Interactive Media program, and major convenor of Digital Arts and Design. He is a narrative artist and interface designer; his work draws upon local history, allegorical narrative, and experience design to create stories both historical and fictional in new, experiential forms. Seth has worked with local museums and galleries on their collections and exhibitions and is the 2019 Mittelheuser scholar-in-residence at State Library. His own projects have shown in galleries, symposia and festivals throughout the U.S., Australia, and Europe.

Michael Haugh

Michael Haugh is Professor of Linguistics and Head of the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland. His research focuses on the role of language in social interaction, and he also has a long-standing interest in the importance of preserving our cultural and social heritage with a focus on Australia’s incredibly rich multilingual landscape. He was involved in the establishment of the Australian National Corpus, and more recently has been leading an effort to establish a national language data commons with support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. He has also led the establishment of a new Language Data Analytics Lab in the School of Languages and Cultures at UQ.

Duncan Loxton

Duncan Loxton is an archivist interested in creating avenues of meaningful access to research and true collaboration in fieldwork. Duncan works for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Archive (ATSIDA) at the University of Technology Sydney where he strives to support the individual and collective rights of researchers, community groups and institutions to control the circumstances in which their knowledge is shared and applied.

Amanda Healy

Amanda Healy is a Sales Director for Australia and New Zealand at Ex Libris since it was acquired by ProQuest in 2016. Previously, Amanda held the role of Senior Field Sales Engineer for ProQuest Workflow Solutions and has been with ProQuest since 2003. She started her career in trade publishing for Hungry Minds Australia.

Rachel Merrick

Rachel Merrick is Coordinator of Digital Library Initiatives, State Library of Queensland. She helps State Library deliver innovative digital services for an evolving online environment. This includes the release of structured open data for use by developers, creative artists, researchers, and library staff. Rachel encourages GLAM institutions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) to harness their data-rich digital collections of photographs, maps, manuscripts, videos, and more for re-use in computational environments.

Dr Sara King

Dr Sara King is an eResearch Analyst with Australia’s academic and research network provider, AARNet. She has extensive experience in engagement and training, with expertise in research data and technologies in the Humanities and Social Science research areas. Prior to eResearch she worked for almost a decade at the National Archives of Australia and in public libraries. She has a PhD in Migration Studies and is currently a little bit obsessed with the idea of knitting as a form of coding.

Alison Dellit

Alison Dellit is the Assistant Director-General of Collaboration at the National Library of Australia, responsible for Trove, digitisation programs, the national union catalogue services and the Library’s own resource sharing. Her career has spanned managing collections, running collaborative digital services, and working on digital deposit systems.