current projects
SurveiLit investigates how recent forms of narrative fiction reflect and shape understandings of old, new and emerging forms of surveillance. It aims to generate new knowledge about the personal and social implications of digital surveillance across different cultural, technological and geographical contexts. Focusing on a range of contemporary novels, the project asks three key questions: 1. What new narrative formations have emerged in post-2000 fiction to represent the experience and effects of surveillance? (e.g. metaphors, rhetorical devices, stylistic techniques, formal innovations) 2. How does contemporary fiction help us understand the differential impacts of surveillance on different demographics around the globe today? 3. What subject relations (self and other, self and society) and modes of subjectification (self-awareness, self-observation) does the C21st novel develop in response to the conditions of ubiquitous dataveillance? Expected outcomes include a significant interdisciplinary methodology that integrates surveillance studies, digital humanities, and literary studies to improve our understanding of surveillance. The project also aims to generate teaching and public engagement resources for research, industry, and government.
This is a research collaboration with the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics (CAIDE) at the University of Melbourne with Dr Vanessa Bartlett, Gabby Bush, Dr Kristal Spreadborough, Dr Jasmin Pfefferkorn and Emilie Sunde. We explore the contribution of art to enquiry about the ethics of Artificial Intelligence and digital innovation, with an emphasis on how artists and curators produce aesthetic encounters and emotional engagements that support ethical feeling and deliberation. We are guided by two overarching research questions: What, specifically, do artists and curators bring to the conversation about AI and digital ethics? and, how do we practice in ethical ways? The Art, AI and Digital Ethics research collective is currently working on an edited volume, titled Decentring Ethics: AI Art as Method. This book argues that artists and cultural institutions are a vital force in the construction of a relational, collectively held ethics of human-machine assemblages. It is forthcoming with Open Humanities Press in late 2024.
Water as Method: Reading the Hydrocolony in Global Literature (Ongoing)
The primary objective of this project is to articulate the significance of water, not only as encompassing settler-colonial politics, but also as a cultural, technological, and aesthetic formation with its own mobile and diverse permutations. With a wide geographical focus that spans Australia, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific, the project introduces water as a modality for reading global literature. By considering internal waterways as well as surrounding waterscapes, Water as Method offers innovative ways for reappraising works by authors from Australia, the Indian Ocean region, and the Pacific Ocean. This collaborative international project is conducted by four early career researchers: Dr Tyne Daile Sumner at the University of Melbourne, Dr Keyvan Allahyari at the University of Tübingen, and Dr Jennifer Leetsch and Dr Katharina Fackler at the University of Bonn. (The project is supported by the Bonn-Melbourne Research Excellence Fund).
Past Projects
Literature and the Face: A Critical History (2021-2024)
Literature and the Face was an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded Discovery Project (DP200101325) based at the University of Melbourne and the University of Geneva, led by Professor Stephanie Trigg. The project studied the way the human face is represented in literary texts from the medieval through to the contemporary era. It generated comprehensive new knowledge about changing literary and textual discourses about the face by combining rhetorical and textual analysis, the insights of cognitive literary theory, historical analysis and digital methodologies. By doing this, we hoped to develop a deeper understanding of the cultural history of facial expression, identity and emotion, with particular attention to gender and ethnicity. The project hosted its culminating symposium from 27th-29th November, 2024.
The Australian Cultural Data Engine (ACD-E) (2021-2023)
The ACD-Engine was a multidisciplinary digital humanities project funded by the ARC from 2021-23 (LE210100021), led by Professor Rachel Fensham. The project harnessed leading cultural databases from Australia and internationally to analyse cultural production, artistic networks, and the socio-economic implications of arts and cultural data. It aimed to improve the quality of cultural data available to researchers, industry and government and to facilitate interoperability across platforms, systems and regions. With a small team based and the University of Melbourne, and with 12 CIs from around Australia and internationally, we extracted, aggregated and analysed digital data about artists and cultural activity in Australian history. The project produced aggregated datasets, sample analytics, and supplementary materials, available for ongoing analysis and reuse.
Surveillance Sentiments: Literature, Culture, Aesthetics (2023)
This project examined the cultural, aesthetic and imaginative sentiments and implications of twenty-first century dataveillance. It aims to collect and analyse public reflections on the experience of contemporary datafied surveillance with a focus on the linguistic, semantic and rhetorical devices used to explain its effects. Although there are several studies that have asked people directly or in abstract terms about personal data and privacy issues, these studies have been narrow in scope and are often limited to the fields of information and surveillance studies. Through the use of Natural Language Processing and theoretical analysis, the project developed an innovative interdisciplinary approach to the study of dataveillance today. (This project was supported by an Early Career Researcher grant from University of Melbourne and was developed with the Research Assistance of Alex Shermon).