The lab space is in the heart of London, in the Virginia Woolf building close to the Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) and the main Strand campus of King’s College London.
The members of the lab are motivated by
problem solving and innovation and come from a variety of backgrounds, both
commercial and academic. We pride ourselves on being approachable and being
able to communicate technical concepts effectively to a range of audiences.
Similarly, we have worked in many subject areas and are accustomed to absorbing
new ideas, discussing new directions, and learning with our project partners.
We are closely affiliated with the Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) at King’s College, having formed a separate unit in 2015. Our close connections with our digital humanities colleagues allow us to collaborate on research, to work with students and interns studying at DDH and to draw on expertise.
As part of our commitment to emergent technology we hold regular technical review sessions to discuss the potentials and application of new devices, software and techniques.
We take a collective, role-based, approach to our work. If you would like to contact us please email kdl-info@kcl.ac.uk and we will ensure the right person is assigned to you.
The KDL team
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Samantha Callaghan
Research Software Analyst
Samantha has an MLIS and received her training in the field of digitisation through her work at the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre. She has worked on a wide variety of digitisation projects, large and small, both in NZ and in the UK. She has written or co-written articles around interlibrary loan, digitisation and Mātauranga Māori, digitisation in small institutions and orphan work licensing schemes.
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Dr. Paul Caton
Deputy Director and Senior Research Software Analyst
Paul Caton took up his first digital humanities post - as Electronic Publications Editor at the Women Writers Project - whilst completing his Ph.D in English Literature at Brown University. He also worked as a project analyst for Brown's Scholarly Technology Group.
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Dr. Arianna Ciula
Director & Senior Research Software Analyst
Arianna is an Analyst at KDL and has broad experience in digital humanities research and teaching, research management, and digital research infrastructures. She holds a PhD in Manuscript and Book Studies (digital palaeography, University of Siena), an MA in Applied Computing in the Humanities (King’s College London) and a BA Hons in Communication sciences (computational linguistics, University of Siena).
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Alessandra Esposito
Research Software Project Manager
Alessandra is responsible for high-level project management of internally and externally funded projects, liaising between the Solution Development Team (SDT) and project partners, as well as working closely with the Director and Lab Manager to ensure the efficient running of the Lab.
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Elliott Hall
Senior Research Software Engineer
Elliott's research is at the technical end of the department's spectrum. His focus is on building sites that bring a new level of interactivity to work with data that is often fuzzy and confusing.
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Neil Jakeman
Senior Research Software Analyst
Neil came to the Department of Digital Humanities as a Research Developer in 2011 to help guide development in the spatial turn that DH research was enjoying at that time. He specializes in digital creative practice (in particular using 3D technologies) and in geographic information systems.
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Brian Maher
Senior Research Software Engineer & Systems Administrator
After completing his MSc in Bioinformatics at KCL, Brian joined the
Department of Digital Humanities in 2013 as a Research Developer
working on two projects - “The Art of Making” and “The Making ofCharlemagne’s Europe”.
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Pamela Mellen
Research Software Lab Manager
Pamela Mellen oversees the Lab's business functions and is deeply involved in managing the Lab's strategic and continuous improvement goals. She has worked at King's since 2012, where she developed a solid background in research management before moving across to the newly formed Digital Lab in 2016.
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Lucie Mingmei Hao
Research Software UI/UX Designer
Lucie joined KDL in August 2023 as a designer. She has an interdisciplinary background with expertise in academic research, human-computer interaction, frontend and web technologies, UI/UX. She is keen to draw connections between both digital media and innovative technologies. she also has practical experience in industry-focused media projects.
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Geoffroy Noël
Senior Research Software Engineer
Geoffroy is a programmer analyst who joined King's College London in 2008, after more than nine years working for various technology startups in Brussels and London, and has since contributed to and led the analysis and software development of several Digital Humanities projects.
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Tiffany Ong
Senior Research Software UI/UX Designer
Tiffany is a designer with a background in textiles. She completed her BA in Ravensbourne college and later an MA at the Royal College of Art.
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Miguel Vieira
Principal Research Software Engineer
Miguel Vieira has worked in the digital humanities domain since 2006, when he joined the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King's College London.
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Tim Watts
Senior Research Software Systems Manager
Tim loves Linux and Perl and is a firm believer that open source software benefits mankind.
Academic Affiliates
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Professor Marilyn Deegan
Academic Affiliate
Marilyn has 20 years experience in digital humanities. Formerly the Director of the Centre for Humanities Computing, Oxford University. Director of Digital Resources, Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University (1997-2004).
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Dr. Stuart Dunn
Academic Affiliate
Stuart Dunn is Head of the Department of Digital Humanities at King's. He started out as an archaeologist, with interests in the history of cartography, digital approaches to landscape studies, and spatial humanities. Stuart has worked with members of the KDL team on many projects.
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Professor Willard McCarty
Academic Affiliate
Willard began with mainframes, trained as a Miltonist with focus on
biblical and classical literature, helped nurture infant digital
humanities and is now a persistent questioner of its fitness to be of as
well as in these disciplines. He was at Toronto until he joined King’s
in 1996. Now he edits Interdisciplinary Science Reviews and is
co-organiser of the Cambridge workshop, “Science in the Forest, Science
in the Past”, with Sir Geoffrey Lloyd and Aparecida Vilaça. -
Professor Charlotte Roueché
Academic Affiliate
Charlotte is a classicist by training, with a particular interest in the later periods of the Roman world, and in the Byzantine Empire. She has worked with the digital humanists at King’s since the early 1990s, and since 2004 has published online corpora, and literary texts, exploring the uses of changing technologies.
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Professor Harold Short
Academic Affiliate
Harold Short is Emeritus Professor of King’s College London, where he founded and directed the Centre for Computing in the Humanities.
Consultancy Affiliates
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Professor Simon Tanner
Pro Vice Dean (Impact & Innovation), Arts & Humanities
Simon Tanner has over 20 years’ experience working with major cultural institutions across the world to assist them to transform their collections and online presence.
Research Fellows
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John Bradley
Honorary Research Fellow
John has worked in the Digital Humanities since the late 1970s; first at the University of Toronto, and then, starting in 1997, at King's College London in the Department of Digital Humanities (initially called the Centre for Computing in the Humanities).
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Katherine Bode
Visiting Research Fellow
Katherine Bode is Associate Professor of Literary and Textual Studies at the Australian National University and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow from 2018 to 2023.
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Visiting Research Fellow
Ginestra Ferraro
Ginestra is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, her research focusing on UI/UX design, particularly on Design Workflow Integration. She is also a co-organiser of London Web Standards, a non-profit organisation that provides monthly events for web enthusiasts and the annual conference State of the Browser.
Former staff
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Luis Figueira
Former Software Developer
Luis worked as a software developer at KDL from 2015-2016.
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Shalen Fu
Former Research Software Project Manager
Shalen worked at KDL from 2022-2023, managing the Lab’s project portfolio and ensuring continuous improvement of the Lab’s project delivery processes.
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Olga Loboda
Former Research Software UI/UX Designer
With a background in digital humanities and front-end development, Olga joined King’s Digital Lab as a UX/UI Designer from 2019 to 2021.
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Chris Pak
Former Postdoctoral Research Associate
Chris worked on the project 'Modelling between Digital and Humanities: Thinking in Practice', funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, from September 2017-April 2018.
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Florence du Pré
Former Research Software Project Manager
Florence worked at the Lab from 2019-2022, supporting the delivery of KDL's projects. She completed the MA Digital Humanities at King's College London in 2016 and has experience in the IT and GLAM sector.
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Dr. Urszula Pawlicka-Deger
Former Marie Curie Research Fellow
Urszula was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at King’s Digital Lab. Prior to this position, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University, a Fulbright scholar at Washington State University Vancouver, and a fellow at Stony Brook University, King’s College London, and the University of Birmingham.
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Dr. Natasha Romanova
Former Digital Methods Lead
Natasha was KDL's Digital Methods Lead from July-December 2019 as part of DARIAH-DESIR project.
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Priyal Shah
Former UI/UX Designer
Priyal contributed to the Alice Thornton project, amongst others during her time as a UI/UX Designer at the Lab
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Dr. James Smithies
Former Lab Director
James Smithies was Director of King’s Digital Lab (KDL) at King’s College London from 2015-September 2021.
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Carina Westling
Former Project Manager and Visiting Research Fellow
Carina worked at King’s Digital Lab as project manager, collaborating with her colleagues to develop processes for putting 100 legacy digital humanities projects under contractual agreement and secure maintenance or responsible archiving.