Who we are

Dr Chris Thomson

ADL Director

Chris is a Lecturer in English and Digital Humanities. His research interests lie at the intersection of literary studies and digital humanities, particularly on the way digital media technologies shape and are shaped by cultural practices. He is also interested in the adaptations of literature in digital media; posthumanism in literature; and the application of text mining as a research method in the humanities.
Research profile

Chris Carr

Technician

Chris Carr is thrilled to join the Arts Digital Lab as a technician, bringing a unique blend of AI expertise and a strong background in teaching to the vibrant field of digital humanities. Chris is keen on exploring the intersection of technology and the arts, and is eager to contribute to innovative projects that bridge these disciplines. With a deep commitment to fostering creativity and expanding the reach of digital tools in the humanities, he is looking forward to collaborating with colleagues and students to push the boundaries of what’s possible in this exciting and rapidly evolving field.

Dr Zita Joyce

Zita’s research interests focus on the intersections between media technologies and social and cultural practice, in areas such as broadcasting and social media. She is particularly interested in creative uses of technologies in visual and sound arts and experimental music, the conceptualisation and use of radio spectrum and wireless technologies, and disaster recovery and resilience for creative communities.
Research profile

Karin Stahel

Karin is a postgraduate student and teaching assistant in Data Science and Digital Humanities, and Research Assistant in the Arts Digital Lab. She completed the Master of Applied Data Science (MADS) programme at UC in 2021, and since then has assisted with research on a number of QuakeBox projects in the Arts Digital Lab. Karin is a recipient of the UC Aho Hīnātore | Accelerator Scholarship in 2023 and her research will explore the use of machine learning algorithms to classify the genre of articles in historical New Zealand newspapers. 

Kaspar Middendorf

ADL Manager

Kaspar is the Lab’s Manager. They were part of the team that developed the CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive, and have contributed to a number of other major research projects, including QuakeBox Take 2, Understanding Place, and the Canterbury Roll digitisation project. Kaspar has qualifications in mathematics, linguistics and secondary teaching, and completed their MLING thesis in 2017, using statistical modeling to compare priming of syntactic structures in the QuakeBox spoken language corpus and the written language of the Christchurch Press. 

Dr Geoffrey Ford

Geoff began working with the Lab in 2018 as a Postdoctoral Fellow and now works as a Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, which includes teaching into the Digital Humanities programme. Geoff is a Political Scientist and his research combines politics, linguistics and digital methods. Geoff’s current research focuses on the politics of lethal autonomous weapons (‘killer robots’) as part of the Mapping LAWS project and a new project where he is applying digital methods to study the politics of deep-sea mining in the Pacific.
Research profile

Dr John Chrisstoffels

As a Film-maker and Musician for over 35 years John’s research interests span much of what might be described as ‘time-based’ art. He has in that time achieved critical acclaim for his work both Nationally and Internationally. He has collaborated with high-profile international and local artists/film-makers. As a respected member of the New Zealand film-making community John has been a Creative New Zealand panelist and committee member of numerous film organisations and events. Research interests include film theory and the history of film (New Zealand and international), and all facets of film-making directing and producing, as well as new technologies.
Research profile

Dr Ben Adams

Ben is a Senior Lecturer in Geography at UC. He is an associate investigator on the Understanding Place project hosted by the Lab. His current research interests lie at the intersection of text and data mining, natural language processing, and geoparsing. Ben is bringing his knowledge of geographical methods to the research and development of a collaborative digital map of the Residential Red Zone.
Research profile

Rosemary Du Plessis

Rosemary Du Plessis has long term interests in gender, family, work and embodiment. She has edited two collections of feminist writing and contributed to a variety of studies relating to women’s paid and unpaid work. After the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence, she became involved in research with the National Council of Women on women’s experiences of the Canterbury quakes – Women’s Voices – Nga Reo o Nga Wahine. Outputs from this research (oral history interviews, interview summaries and reports) are available on UC CEISMIC.
Research profile

Professor Donald Matheson

Donald is a Professor in Media and Communications. His research interests lie in journalism studies, with a particular emphasis on discourse analysis of journalists’ writing practices. This interest has taken him towards researching journalism in new media, as well as historical and ethical aspects of newswriting. Donald is also interested in journalism sociology and in the study of alternative media. He is the current president of the Australia New Zealand Communication Association.
Research profile

Dr Joshua Wilson Black

Joshua Wilson Black works in philosophy, linguistics, and data science, with digital humanities at the intersection of all three. He is as a Post Doctoral Fellow at the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour | Te Kahui Roro Reo, where he works on the Marsden Funded projects Towards an Improved Theory of Language Change and Understanding the Onset of Vernacular Reorganisation. Both projects depend on large scale corpora of transcribed audio and the exploratory use of advanced statistical techniques. In digital humanities, he has worked on text classification with historical newspaper data and its application in the study of 19th Century Philosophy. In philosophy, he has focused on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, a late-19th and early-20th century pioneer of logic and semiotics. He completed a PhD entitled Peirce’s Conception of Metaphysics at the University of Sheffield in 2017, which presents Peirce’s account of the nature and purpose of metaphysics in his own context and as a resource for contemporary debates in philosophy. He also completed a Master of Applied Data Science at the University of Canterbury | Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha in 2021.
Research profile

Professor Paul Millar

Paul is Head of the School of Humanities and Creative Arts, and Director of the UC Arts Digital Lab. He is a Professor of English with a particular interest in New Zealand literature and the poetry of James K. Baxter. Paul has long been involved in Digital Humanities projects and research, having co-founded the VUW NZ Electronic Text Collection, and leading the establishment of New Zealand’s first Digital Humanities teaching programme at UC
Research profile

Professor Clemency Montelle

Clemency is a Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics. She has research interests in the mathematical history of several early cultures of inquiry including Mesopotamia, Greece, India, and the Islamic near east. Her first book Chasing Shadows-Mathematics, Astronomy, and the Early History of Eclipse Reckoning (Johns Hopkins University Press) focuses on the theoretical treatment of eclipse phenomena in the ancient world. She is currently immersed in a 5-year project on the history of mathematical astronomy in Sanskrit sources, supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Research profile

Dr Tara Ross

Tara Ross is a former senior reporter now senior journalism lecturer at the University of Canterbury, where she is also a research fellow with the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies. Her research interests lie in journalism studies with an emphasis on inclusive journalism and ethnic minority, community, and Pacific media. This interest has led to researching journalism using content analysis and social network analysis methods, as well as in-depth interviews and focus groups. Current work explores questions of identity, representation, and media in the New Zealand context, as well as the robustness of local news provision.
Research profile

Dr Chia-rong Wu

Chia-rong Wu is an Associate Professor (Reader) in the Department of Global, Cultural and Language Studies at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Dr. Wu received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He specializes in Sinophone literature, film, and video games through the lens of postcolonial theories, Indigenous studies, diaspora, and ecocriticism. Dr. Wu is the author of Supernatural Sinophone Taiwan and Beyond (Cambria Press, 2016) and Remapping the Contested Sinosphere: The Cross-cultural Landscape and Ethnoscape of Taiwan (Cambria Press, 2020). He is also the co-editor of Taiwan Literature in the 21st Century: A Critical Reader (Springer, 2023). Dr. Wu is currently working on two new book projects: his third monograph on the transmedia narratives of youth politics and an edited volume called “The Southern Discourse in Sinophone Literature: Moving Borders.”
Research profile

Sacha McMeeking

Advisor

Sacha holds a Masters of Laws from UC and her career path has woven through public policy, social entrepreneurship and academia. She was formerly the General Manager of Strategy and Influence with Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, and was the inaugural Fulbright Harkness Fellow in 2010. Sacha is the former head of Aotahi – the School of Māori and Indigenous Studies at UC and co-director of the Maui Lab, connecting students with communities and organisations in order to create Next Generation Solutions for Te Ao Māori.

Dr James Smithies

Advisor

James Smithies was Director of King’s Digital Lab (KDL) from 2015-September 2021. He was previously Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities and Associate Director of the UC CEISMIC Digital Archive at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He has worked in the government and commercial IT sectors as a technical writer and editor, business analyst, and project manager. In 2017 he published a monograph for Palgrave Macmillan titled Digital Humanities and the Digital Modern. See his personal website for more information about his work.

Professor Paul Arthur

Adjunct Professor

Professor Paul Arthur is Chair in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences and Director of the Centre for Global Issues, at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he speaks and publishes widely on major challenges and changes facing 21st-century society, from the global impacts of technology on culture and identity to migration and human rights. His latest book is Migrant Nation: Australian Culture, Society and Identity (ed., 2018).

Wang Ling

Wang Ling began her PhD in Literature at the University of Canterbury in 2023. Her research interests are contemporary Chinese literature and comparative literature, with a particular focus on ecological trauma studies, disaster narratives and gender studies. Working in education in China, she is committed to combining literature and education and exploring more possibilities of literature for educational practice and guidance. Ling joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the project “Empowering Indigenous Narratives: An Exploration of Video Games for Historical and Cultural Education”.

Stella Cheersmith

Stella has been at the University of Canterbury in various capacities since 2018; after graduating in 2021 with a BA Majoring in English, she continued as a postgraduate student, completing her Master of Writing earlier this year. She has also tutored for WRIT 101: Writing for Academic Success, and joined the ADL in 2024 to lead the team of RAs working on the CEISMIC QuakeCoRE website. 

Erin Spencer

Erin is a doctoral candidate under the Faculty of Health at the University of Canterbury. Her research crosses disciplines of social science, humanities, and sport. She joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the QuakeCoRE CEISMIC project. 

Stephanie Ingham

Stephanie joined the Arts Digital Lab in 2024 as a research assistant on the CEISMIC QuakeCoRE project, primarily writing about the Christchurch Cathedral. Passionate about technical writing, this experience allowed her to chance to hone her research and writing skills in a professional environment.

As an Undergraduate, Stephanie studied a Bachelor of Arts in English and Media Communication at UC. After graduating, she continued to study, expecting to complete a Masters of Writing in February 2025. In this time, Stephanie also tutored for DISC222, a second-year class about Digital Screenwriting.

Lauren Millar

Lauren is studying a Masters of Linguistics. Her research focuses on the expression of emotion in the Christchurch earthquake narratives, using the QuakeBox Project. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in 2023, majoring in Classics and Linguistics and minoring in French. Lauren first joined the Arts Digital Lab in 2021 as a research assistant on the QuakeBox Take 2 project, and she also assisted the DHA2021 conference that year. In 2024, Lauren rejoined the ADL to work on the Papers Past annotation project.

Jennie Meuldijk

Jennie joined the ADL in mid-2023 as a Research Assistant, working on a project to explore digital approaches to film studies. She returned to the Lab in 2024 to assist with content curation for the CEISMIC QuakeCoRE project.

Kaihui Bi

Kaihui joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the project “Empowering Indigenous Narratives: An Exploration of Video Games for Historical and Cultural Education”. 

Natanael Santos Delgado

Natanael joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the project “Criminalisation and Deportation by Pacific Peoples by New Zealand and Australia: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of ‘Post-Pandemic’ Social Media”. 

David Neighbours

David joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the CEISMIC QuakeCoRE project.

Rebecca Harris

Rebecca joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the CEISMIC QuakeCoRE project.

Nohah Forde

Nohah joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the ‘Possibilities of Big Podcast Data’ project.

Dorian Ghosh

Dorian completed B.A. in English and Cultural Studies with concentrations in Critical Animal Studies, Gender Studies and Indigenous Studies from University of Canterbury in 2022. They are interested in the performance of gender in everyday life, including its manifestations in disaster narratives, the effects of natural disasters on urban wildlife, the intersection of gender and the meat industrial complex and the decolonisation of animal subjectivity. They initially joined the Lab as a research assistant in 2021 for the “Canterbury Earthquake Narratives – The Experience of Re-Telling” project and returned in 2022 to curate content for the CEISMIC QuakeCoRE archive, again in 2023 identifying content for the Our Stories Earthquake Story Walk, and in 2024 as a research assistant on the projects “Tracking the Development of the Paipera Tapu through the 19^th Century” and “Criminalisation and Deportation of Pacific Peoples by New Zealand and Australia”.

Jack Xiao

Jack joined ADL in 2024 as a research assistant while studying the Master of Applied Data Science program at the University of Canterbury. He is working on the projects “Criminalisation and Deportation by Pacific Peoples by New Zealand and Australia: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of ‘Post-Pandemic’ Social Media” and “Exploring the vā and lā of Aotearoa’s climate journalism”. With a strong interest in digitalizing research methods and automating processes, Jack leverages data science and computational techniques to tackle problems and streamline the workflows within the projects.

Luis Paterson

Luis’ research focuses on self-construction, reform, slavery, abolitionism, and the foundational yet ever-contested influence and utility of radicalism in American politics and society. His PhD thesis illuminates the hitherto unexplored process of self-construction that leading American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison undertook before founding the Liberator in 1831 and the critical effect Garrison’s self-construction had on American immediate abolitionism. An avid musician and composer, Luis also delves into music and cultural history with a focus on the origins of the Blues onward. Alongside politics and ideas Luis has keen interest in unearthing and telling the stories that make up our human experience, such as those of his current research focus with CEISMIC: spontaneous volunteers.

Luis was also a research assistant on the Papers Past annotation project in late 2024.

Hao Zhou

Hao joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the project “The possibilities of Big Podcast Data”. 

Sophie Taylor-Brown

Sophie joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the CEISMIC QuakeCoRE project.

Holly Best

Holly joined the ADL in 2024, and is working on a project to digitise the letters of J.C. Sturm. 

Sage Anastasi

Sage joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the project “Exploring the vā and lā of Aotearoa’s climate journalism”. 

Caitlyn McMillan

Caitlyn joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the ‘Possibilities of Big Podcast Data’ project.

Daniel Steel

Daniel worked as a research assistant for the Papers Past annotation project in late 2024.

Irenie How

Irenie worked as a research assistant for the Papers Past annotation project in late 2024.

Meiling Li

Meiling joined the ADL in 2024 as a research assistant on the ‘Possibilities of Big Podcast Data’ project. She stayed on in the Lab as a summer scholar over the summer of 2024/25.

Ivy Tang

Ivy joined the Lab as a summer scholar over the summer of 2024/25, working on a project to scope corpora and do preliminary exploratory data analysis.

Shan Lu

Shan joined the Lab as a summer scholar over the summer of 2024/25, working on the project ‘LLM-powered Deep-Sea Miner: applying retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to research corpora’.

Chanvicheka Korng

Shan joined the Lab as a summer scholar over the summer of 2024/25, working on a project to parse and analyse text data from New Zealand’s parliament.

Helen Leggatt

Helen has recently graduated with a doctorate in History. She joined the Lab in 2023 to work on the Imperial Reinforcements project, collecting and annotating data from historical newspapers.

Raghu Senthil Kumar

I am a graduate of the MADS program (Feb 2023- Dec 23) at UC. Before embarking on my journey in data science, I worked in the automotive and pharmaceutical industries back in India. As a Research Assistant in the Arts Digital Lab in 2024, I primarily worked on setting up a development server for the CEISMIC website.

Tessa Boraston

Tessa joined the ADL as a Research Assistant in 2023, helping to create a digital corpus for the Taniwha: A Cultural History project.

Emma Marie

Hi! My name is Emma Marie. I’m a Swiss international student, currently completing a Master of Applied Data Science (February 2023 – February 2024) and working part-time as a Research Assistant for the Arts Digital Lab. My role is to web scrape and perform some computer-assisted text analysis for the Immigration Detention project. I did my undergraduate studies in Forensic Sciences (BSc(Hons)) in Scotland. In my spare time, I enjoy walking/hiking, gardening, swimming, doing crochet, and playing board games.

Niranjan Srivats Chandrasekhar

Niranjan is a student in the Master of Applied Data Science programme. He worked in the Lab as a Research Assistant in 2023, contributing to the Immigration Detention Discourse and Roy Bruce Letters projects.

Isaac Dann

Isaac is a Master of Applied Data Science student who joined the ADL in mid-2023 as a Research Assistant, developing workflows to migrate WordPress and Omeka sites to Docker/Podman containers.

Christian Llave

Christian is a student in the Master of Applied Data Science program and joined the lab in 2023 to work with the Taniwha project team as a research assistant to collect, process, and analyse relevant text data.  Prior to this role, he immersed himself in the digital advertising industry where he developed an interest in the applications of machine learning in digital media and decision science. 

Alex Jefferies

Alex was a Master of Applied Data Science student who worked in the Lab over the summer of 2022/23 on the GeneralIndex Workflow project.

Feng Wang

Feng is studying towards a Master of Applied Data Science, and is very interested in programming in Python and R. He worked in the Lab over the summer of 2022/23 on the GeneralIndex Workflow project.

Xiaotian Yang

Xiaotian was a Master of Applied Data Science student who worked in the Lab over the summer of 2022/23 on the GeneralIndex Workflow project.

Robb Carpinter

Robert Carpinter was a Research Assistant in the Lab in early 2022, working in the Arts Digital Lab on the CTV archive project. His role was to catalogue material relating to the CTV building’s collapse. Robb has Certificate in Personal Training, a Bachelor of Science (Psychology), and a Master of Writing. He left the Lab in order to take up a position with the Christchurch branch of Desktop Imaging.

Gia Hurring

Gia is a PhD student with the Linguistics Department at UC and has been actively involved in the QB2 Discourse Project since 2021. Within this project, Gia is working on three sub-projects: macro-narrative structure, micro-structural change, and geolocational correlation. 

Shaylee Bright

Shaylee was a Research Assistant with the ADL in 2021, assisting with comms for the DHA2021 conference.

Sara Christey

Sara is pursuing a double Arts major in both Linguistics and Classics, with plans to go into research and archive management. In 2021 she worked as a Research Assistant for NZILBB and the ADL on the QuakeBox Take 2 Project while completing full-time study.

Lucy Denham

Lucy was a Research Assistant in the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2020/21, interviewing Māori participants in the QuakeBox Take 2 project. 

Kia ora, ko Lucy tāku ingoa. Ko Ngāi Tahu, ko Ngāti Mamoe, ko Waitaha ōku iwi. Nō Murihiku au, engari i tipu ake au i Ōtepoti. Kei te ako au ki tētahi tohu paetahi i Te Reo Māori, ā, Whakaakoranga Māori. 

My name is Lucy. Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mamoe and Waitaha are my iwi. I am from Southland, but I grew up in Dunedin. I’m studying towards a Bachelor of Arts Majoring in Te Reo Māori and Māori and Indigenous Studies.

Davide Garello

Davide Garello is an Honours Graduate in Media and Communications from the University of Canterbury. He is the former leader of a video gaming community of over 35,000 active members as well as an eSport player, contending in the international stage for the US Team Omnibus. Davide has been part of projects ranging from marketing and advertising to public diplomacy, focusing primarily on the creative use of social media and the organisation of themed events for promotional purposes. He is interested in studying how our personal experience, knowledge, and interests all together shape the way we interact in the digital sphere. Davide joined the ADL as a Research Assistant in 2021, interviewing participants in the “Canterbury Earthquake Narratives—The Experience of Re-Telling” project.

Josie Hepburn

Josie worked in the ADL from 2020-21 as a Research Assistant for the QuakeBox Take 2 project, transcribing particiants’ stories.

Mary Hollero

Data Science student Mary Hollero undertook a DATA 601 project in the Lab in the summer of 2020/21, analysing data from the QuakeStudies archive.

Luisa Leo

Luisa was a Research Assistant with the ADL in 2021, assisting with the DHA2021 conference.

Natalie Looyer

Natalie joined the ADL as a Research Assistant in 2020, initially working on the QuakeBox Take 2 project, as a key member of the large team who were transcribing the stories. In 2021 she assisted with the Media and Justice project, and was the administrator for the DHA2021 Conference. She is now pursuing a PhD at Victoria University of Wellington.

Mengjun Yu

PhD student Mengjun joined the Arts Digital Lab as a volunteer in 2019, helping to interview participants for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.  She was employed as a Research Assistant in 2020, preparing material for the QuakeStudies archive, and again in 2021, researching background material for the Christchurch Diaspora project.

Bipulendra Adhikari

Bipul was a Research Assistant in the ADL in 2020, assisting with an OCR project.

Nicole Ashby

Nicole volunteered with the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2020, helping to interview participants for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Maggie Blackwood

Linguistics Masters student Maggie joined the ADL as a Research Assistant in 2020, transcribing participant stories for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Sahana Cidambi

Sahana was a Research Assistant in the Lab in 2020, working on the Sanskrit scroll digitisation project.

Emma Gambles

Emma worked in the ADL in 2020 as a Research Assistant for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Samuel Hope

Sam completed a BA at UC in 2015, followed by a BA Hons in 2016, studying Anthropology and English. He joined the UC Arts Digital Lab as a Digital Projects Specialist in 2018, coordinating outreach, assisting with research, and helping maintain a number of the Lab’s web projects, while also working towards a MA in Cultural Studies. Sam left the Lab in 2020 for a role at Statistics NZ.

Jameela Jamal

Jameela was a Research Assistant in the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2020, working on the Understanding Place project.

Aditya Jha

Adi was a Research Assistant in the Lab in 2020, working on the Sanskrit scroll digitisation project.

Daniel Bartlett

Dan returned to the Lab in 2019 as a Digital Projects Specialist contributing to the Kia Tōpū project. Dan has worked as an historian at the Office of Treaty Settlements, and was a contributing author to Tāngata Ngāi Tahu: People of Ngāi Tahu (Bridget Williams Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Heritage Non-fiction Book Awards. Previously, Dan had been a Summer Scholar for the Voices Against War project over the summer of 2015/2016, writing and loading content about the pacifists, conscientious objectors and seditious Cantabrians of WWI. He completed a BA(Hons) in History at UC, and is the recipient of the 2019 Canterbury History Foundation Community Historian Award.

Libby Duncan

Libby volunteered in the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2019, helping to recruit participants for the QuakeBox: Take 2 project.  She is studying Political Science and Media & Communication, and was interested in improving her researching ability and digital literacy skills.

Daniel Ellsworth

Dan is an undergraduate student studying Math and Computer Science at Tulane University. In 2019 he worked on the Canterbury Roll Arcs Project as a PACE 295 intern, while he was an exchange student at the University of Canterbury. His research interests include the study of human-computer interaction and the symbiotic relationship between humans and artificial intelligence.

Lesley Gilder

Lesley was the first of our CEISMIC volunteers, joining us in early 2015 to help with the describing of content for the archive. Now retired, Lesley returned to the Arts Digital Lab as a volunteer in late 2019, helping to interview participants for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Nathan Gull

Nathan completed a BA in History and English in 2018, and is currently working to towards Honours in History. He worked on the Canterbury Roll digitisation project over the summer of 2017, focussing on researching the part of the Roll related to the heptarchy. Nathan, alongside Natasha Som, returned to the Lab in 2019 as an intern, researching ways to mark up locations that appear on the Roll in TEI. This involved furthering the work of Paula Friend and Sarah Siddoway, who set up a framework for how geographic locations are researched for the Roll.

Tim Guy

Tim is a fourth year BA student who is double majoring in Communications and Media alongside Cinema Studies. He took up an internship at the Arts Digital Lab in 2019 as a part of the Understanding Place project in order to gain experience in the field of advertising through the Red Zone Stories app launch.

James Hurren

James completed a summer internship with  the Arts Digital Lab at the end of his 3rd year in a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Political Science and Media & Communications. Running from November 2018 to February 2019, the internship was the last part of his degree.  While in the Lab, James worked on the Understanding Place project, assisting with communications such as explaining and promoting the Red Zone Stories app, liaising with interested groups and setting up workshops to collect data.

Sowjanya Karri

Masters of Applied Data Science student Sonu has spent the summer of 2018/2019 in the Lab, applying her data science skills to the Understanding Place project. Teamed with Varaarchita Kathju, Sonu investigated methods of applying automated transcription and sentiment analysis to stories collected by the project.

Varaarchita Kathju

Masters of Applied Data Science student Varaarchita spent the summer of 2018/2019 in the Lab, applying her data science skills to the Understanding Place project. Teamed with Sowjanya Karri, Varaarchita investigated methods of applying automated transcription and sentiment analysis to stories collected by the project.

Dr Kara Kennedy

Formerly a Postgraduate Research Associate for the UC Arts Digital Lab, Kara was employed in 2019 a Digital Projects Specialist working on the Kia Tōpū future food project. She recently completed her PhD in English at UC with a focus on twentieth-century science fiction, and also researches in the area of Digital Humanities pedagogy and digital literacy.

Riho Kojima

Classics student Riho began volunteering with us in 2019, helping to interview participants for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Jakob Kristensen

Jakob was a Postgraduate Research Associate for the UC Arts Digital Lab, assisting with organising seminars and workshops. He was a PhD candidate in Media and Communication, working with online communication and politics focusing on social media, Big Data and computational models.

Sanjoy Kumar

Applied Data Science student Sanjoy volunteered in the Arts Digital Lab in 2019, helping to develop scripts and workflows for the Macdonald Dictionary project.

Melissa Bellitte

Melissa joined the Arts Digital Lab team in early 2018 on an internship from Farmingdale State College in New York. She helped to develop new processes for preparing material for the QuakeStudies archive, and assisted with coordination of the Arts Digital Project volunteers.

Viknesh Elumalai

Viknesh was an Arts Digital Project Volunteer in 2018. Along with fellow Master of Applied Data Science students Manoj and Tushar, he helped us to create a dataset for the Understanding Place project.

Eleanor Hurton

Master of Writing student Eleanor joined the Arts Digital Project Volunteer team in 2018. She helped us to clean data for the Understanding Place project.

Jayson Boon

History Honours student Jayson worked as a Lab intern with Josh Kim in 2017 to document the arcs on the Canterbury Roll. As well as researching the relationships between figures on the Roll, Jayson and Josh added entries into the biographical database, in preparation for the project’s second phase.

Erin Burgess

Erin joined the team as a CEISMIC volunteer in 2017, and worked on descriptions for the Street Art collection in QuakeStudies. She is currently studying towards a Bachelor of Arts at UC. Erin says volunteering with CEISMIC improved her writing skills, and helped her to be more aware of the effects the earthquakes have had on infrastructure and building in Christchurch.

Zhivannah Cole

Zhivannah joined the Lab on a PACE 495 internship in 2017, working on the Canterbury Roll project. Her contributions to the project included assisting with the TEI markup of the transcription and translation text, and coordinating the contributions of the students from Nottingham Trent University who were researching the historical figures mentioned in the Roll.

Paula Friend

Paula, a BA Hons student, completed her second internship with the Canterbury Roll digitisation project in 2018. In 2017 she researched the Anglo-Saxon period and in 2018 completed the TEI markup of individuals named on the Roll. Paula also co-developed a framework for future interns to research the Roll’s geographic locations.

Emlie Gallaugher

BCom student Emilie was a CEISMIC volunteer in 2017, and helped write descriptions for the Street Art collection.

Rosalee Jenkin

Rosalee is a UC graduate with a Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design and an Arts degree in Psychology. She is the co-founder of the Room Four art space, and carries out her own art projects in the form of socially engaging public events. Rosalee joined the CEISMIC team in 2013, and in early 2017 moved on to work as an advocate for the Anglican Social Justice Unit.

Josh Kim

History Honours student Josh worked in the Lab as an intern alongside fellow student Jayson Boon to document arcs on the Canterbury Roll. This involved conducting research to identify relationships between figures on the manuscript (familial, political, or otherwise).

Antoine Landrieu

Antoine completed a Masters in Computer Sciences in 2015 at HE2B-ISIB in Brussels. His interest for Digital Arts grew from his personal background and opportunities available at the local digital lab, LARAS. He joined the Lab in 2017 as a Digital Projects Specialist, putting his computer skills and international connections to the benefit of our ongoing and upcoming projects. Antoine left the Lab at the end of 2017 to continue his travels around New Zealand and Australia.

Matthew Lattin

Matt was a Research Assistant for CEISMIC in 2016-17, preparing a large collection of content from the All Right? mental wellbeing campaign for the archive.

Puimini Bowatte

Puimini was one of our CEISMIC volunteers in 2016, helping us sort through contributed material and identify relevant content for the QuakeStudies archive, as well as helping write photo descriptions and prepare content for uploading. Puimini recently graduated with a BCom from UC, majoring in Accounting and Finance.

Julie-Ann Buick

Julie-Ann is fourth-year Geography student at UC, studying towards a Masters in Urban Resilience and Renewal. She completed an internship with CEISMIC in 2016 which involved identifying and gathering information on temporary, post-quake projects for the Transitional City archive.

Paul Pink

Paul began volunteering in the Lab towards the end of 2016, helping out with the description and geo-referencing of items in the CEISMIC archive. Paul has a fantastic local knowledge, which contributed a level of depth and richness to the metadata associated with items in the archive.

Alex King

Alex worked as a Digital Content Analyst for CEISMIC from September 2013 – May 2015. Alex’s previous experience was as an Assistant Law Librarian for the NZ Law Society Library in Auckland. Alex left the ADL to go off on her “Big OE”, spending time travelling and working in Europe.

Simon Palenski

Simon volunteered with CEISMIC in 2015 and also worked in a paid role to digitise the Townsend Telescope Visitors Book, which has been added to the QuakeStudies archive and was displayed in an exhibition led by the UC Physics department. He is now working at the Christchurch Art Gallery.

Han Li

Han started as an intern with CEISMIC in 2012, and then carried on to work as a Digital Content Analyst, curating and uploading content for a number of collections in the CEISMIC archive. She moved to New York to work for the Digital Media team at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and later went on to work at the British Museum in London.

Lilian von Kaenel

Lilian von Kaenel is a recent graduate from the Master of Applied Data Science programme. She spent the summer of 2023/24 in the Lab completing her summer project on named entity recognition in historical newspapers, and went on to tutor in DIGI in the first semester of 2024.

Lera Protasova

Lera Protasova is a masters student enrolled in the Applied Data Science Masters. She completed her Bachelor of Arts study at Massey University majoring in Psychology and Philosophy. She is working in the Lab as a Research Assistant on a project mapping public lectures and debates in 19th century Christchurch.

Waimere Mahaka

Kāi Tahu, Raukawa ki te tonga

Waimere joined the Lab in 2023, researching Māori stories in the QuakeBox archive, and curating content in QuakeStudies. She is also our official ADL Potplant Whisperer, having grown all of the Lab’s collection of potplants from cuttings.

Brooke Sowden

Brooke has recently completed her Bachelor of Communication degree, majoring in Strategic Communications. She is continuing her studies by studying towards both a Certificate in Commerce, focusing on Marketing and Management, and a Master of Strategic Communications degree, which she hopes to complete in 2024. In the summer of 2022/23 Brooke worked as a research assistant and intern in the Lab under Donald Matheson, helping him with research focusing on biosecurity and the role journalists play in reporting issues like these to the public, both in New Zealand and in the US.

Annika Stedman

Annika was a summer scholar in 2022/23 while finishing a Bachelor of Arts in History and Philosophy. In particular, she is interested in the historiography of religion in the west, with a focus on the Mediaeval through to Reformation period. Over the summer, she worked on presenting a digital edition of the 1631 Wicked Bible, and researching the Court of the High Commission.

Quillan Taylor

Quillan researched Aotearoa’s Wicked Bible as part of a Summer Research Scholarship 2022/23. This project involved creating a website that will host a Bible digitisation and conducting original research investigating some of the Bible’s peculiarities. He recently received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Canterbury, where he majored in both history and anthropology. As an undergraduate, he undertook an independent research course in palaeography and codicology where he studied historical manuscripts and codices, notably Aotearoa’s Wicked Bible.

Sian Doole

Sian is in the final years of her PhD in English, looking specifically at contemporary poetry and its intersections with the maternal body. Her research involves synthesizing theories of new materialism, ecocriticism, and post-anthropocentric thought, and using these to read the lyric as an embodied form. She started working with the Lab in 2022 as a research associate, conducting a close analysis of a small sample of earthquake narratives, aiming to reveal the importance of Indigenous knowledge within disaster response.

Unaiki Melrose

Unaiki was a Research Assistant in the ADL in 2021, interviewing Māori participants for the QuakeBox: Take 2 project.

Caleb Middendorf

Chemistry undergrad Caleb joined the ADL as a Research Assistant in 2021, transcribing participant stories for the QuakeBox Take 2 project. He also assisted with the DHA2021 Conference, leading the technical support team. After graduating with a BSc in 2022, Caleb secured a position with Verum Group Ltd.

Laura Moir

Laura is a graduate from Otago with a BA in Linguistics. After moving to Christchurch to work in IT, she started towards a post-graduate diploma at UC, which introduced her to the work of NZILBB and the ADL. In 2020 and 2021, Laura worked on the QuakeBox: Take 2 and Media and Justice projects as a research assistant. She divides the rest of her time between creative pursuits and freelance IT projects.

Tom Rizzi

Software engineering student Tom Rizzi worked with us as a Research Assistant in 2021, assisting with the build of the Media and Justice website. While in the Lab, Tom also put his software engineering skills to good use by helping us to convert some of the ADL projects to use Docker containers.

Wei Shao

Shao Wei completed her PhD study in media management at the University of Canterbury. Her research focuses on managing journalistic change when going digital is inevitable in news organisations. She joined the ADL as a Research Assistant in 2021, researching background material for the Christchurch Diaspora project.

Emanuel Stoakes

Emanuel Stoakes is an MA student in Media and Communications  and a freelance journalist, with a background in human rights and conflict reporting in Asia, now based in Christchurch.  He joined the ADL as a Research Assistant in 2021, interviewing participants in the “Canterbury Earthquake Narratives—The Experience of Re-Telling” project.

Breeana Thomson

Breeana was a Research Assistant with the ADL in 2021, assisting with comms for the DHA2021 conference.

Drew Wilson

Data Science student Drew joined the ADL as a Research Assistant in 2021, researching background material for the Christchurch Diaspora project.

Sarah Woodfield

Masters student Sarah joined the ADL as a Research Assistant in 2021, transcribing participant stories for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Ulamila Wragg

Ulamila was a Research Assistant with the ADL in 2021, assisting with the DHA2021 conference.

Maryam Mann

Maryam undertook a DATA 601 project in the Lab in the summer of 2019/20, working on the Macdonald Dictionary project.

Haenon Mendes

Haenon undertook a DATA 601 project in the Lab in the summer of 2019/20, working on the Macdonald Dictionary project.

Emily Pointon

Emily volunteered with the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2020, helping to interview participants for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Hannah Rushton

Hannah undertook a DIGI project in the ADL in 2020.

Rose Shayler

Rose was a Research Assistant in the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2020, working on the Understanding Place project.

Simranjeet Singh

Simranjeet undertook a DATA 601 project in the Lab in the summer of 2019/20, working on the Macdonald Dictionary project.

Kimberley Thornton

Kimberly volunteered with the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2020, helping to interview participants for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Rebecca Williams

Rebecca volunteered with the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2020, helping to interview participants for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Alice Matthews

BCom student Alice joined the Lab as an Arts Digital Project Volunteer in 2019, helping us to identify participants for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Arna McAvoy

History student Arna completed an internship with the Arts Digital Lab in the summer of 2018/2019, working on the Voices Against War project.

Sean Peddie

Sean is currently working towards his BA in History at UC. He interned at the UC Digital Arts Lab in 2019 as part of the team involved in the Understanding Place project, working on the development of the Red Zone Stories app and website.

Jenny Rees

Jenny completed a BA Hons in English in 2010, followed by a Graduate Diploma in ICT in 2012.  After working for several years as a web developer, she joined the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2018 as a Digital Project specialist.  As part of the Understanding Place project, she was a key member of the team developing the Red Zone Stories app and website.  Jenny left the Lab in early 2019 to explore new directions for her career.

Dan Richardson

Dan completed a Bachelor of Arts in History in 2018, and is currently completing Honours. He worked as an Intern on the Voices Against War project in 2019, researching and writing biographies on prominent conscientious objectors from the Canterbury area.

Sriparna Saha

PhD student Sriparna began volunteering with us in 2019, helping to interview participants for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Tanja Schwalm

Tanja was a Research Assistant in the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2019, recruiting participants for the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Harmanjot Sidhu

Harmanjot is studying towards a PG Diploma in Applied Data Science, and is interested in using Text Mining to understand the concepts of humanity. She became an Arts Digital Project Volunteer in 2019, working on the Macdonald Dictionary crowdsourcing project, in order to get better insights in the field of text mining.

Megha Sinha

Applied Data Science student Megha volunteered in the Arts Digital Lab in 2019, helping to develop scripts and workflows for the Macdonald Dictionary project.

Harsha Thallam

Applied Data Science student Harsha volunteered in the Arts Digital Lab in 2019, helping to develop scripts and workflows for the Macdonald Dictionary project.

Natasha Som

Natasha is currently working towards her BA Hons in History after completing her BA in History and Classics. In the summer of 2017/2018 she completed research on the Heptarchy period for the Canterbury Roll internship. She continued to contribute towards the Roll in 2019 by marking up the locations found on the Roll in TEI.

Matthew Thompson

Hello! My name is Matthew Thompson, my pronouns are he/him, and I’m a study abroad student here for semester 2, 2019, from Boston, USA.  I love working on complex programming problems like my project of creating a data visualization tool within the digital version of the Canterbury Roll, and when I’m not focused on my academics I’m a passionate skier and tramper.

Hannah Turner

Hannah joined the UC Arts Digital Lab as an intern for the Understanding Place project in the summer of 2018/2019, while studying towards a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Political Science ad International Relations. In her spare time she works in administration and sales for a residential property developer.

Destiny Wiringi

Destiny was a Research Assistant in the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2019, interviewing Māori participants in the QuakeBox Take 2 project.

Dana Mageanu

Dana was a long-time volunteer in the Lab, having joined the Friends of CEISMIC program in 2015. Dana has an MA in Japanese from UC and had previously spent time working in Japan as an English teacher. In 2018 she returned to Japan to take up new work opportunities.

Rebeka Martinka

Rebeka volunteered with the Arts Digital Lab in 2018, while majoring in English and History at UC. She helped prepare metadata for the QuakeStudies archive.

Pratik Mehta

Pratik is currently studying towards a Masters in Applied Data Science at UC. As a CEISMIC volunteer, he worked with Chris Thomson to develop maps based on CEISMIC data.  Pratik says volunteering in the Lab helped him learn skills such as leadership, teamwork and dedication.

Tushar Mehta

Tushar was an Arts Digital Project Volunteer in 2018. Along with fellow Master of Applied Data Science students Viknesh and Manoj, he helped us to create a dataset for the Understanding Place project.

Manoj Sivakumar

Manoj was an Arts Digital Project Volunteer in 2018. Along with fellow Master of Applied Data Science students Viknesh and Tushar, he helped us to create a dataset for the Understanding Place project.

Unmesh Nitin

Unmesh was an Arts Digital Project Volunteer in 2018, while studying towards the Master in Applied Data Science.  He became an Arts Digital Project Volunteer to gain some real world experience, helping us to clean data for the Understanding Place project.

Sarah Siddoway

Sarah completed a BA in English and History in 2017, and completed the BA(Hons) in History in 2018. She was an intern with the Canterbury Roll project in 2018, assisting in the digitisation of the Roll by marking up names and places from the commentary in TEI. Sarah also co-developed a framework for future interns to research the Roll’s geographic locations.

Luyao Yu

Luyao is studying for her PhD in Cultural Studies, and became an Arts Digital Project Volunteer  in 2018 in order to sharpen her communication skills and technical competence. She assisted us to prepare metadata for QuakeStudies content.

Tiana Ratana

Tiana was a Research Assistant for the UC Arts Digital Lab in 2017, working on Kōmako: a bibliography of writing by Māori in English, led by Dr Bridget Underhill and Dr Chris Thomson.

Bojana Rimbovska

Bojana was a Research Assistant in the UC Arts Digital Lab in late 2017. She recently completed a BA (Hons) in Art History, and worked alongside Laura Dunham (UC Art History and Theory Department) and Samuel Hope correcting photographic images of Samuel Hurst Seager’s Lantern Slide collection for display in the Hurst Seager Digital Collection.

Maree Shirota

Maree first volunteered with CEISMIC in 2015, helping with the describing of content for the archive. As an MA student in History, she later contributed to the Canterbury Roll project, and wrote her thesis on fifteenth-century political culture and perceptions on the Roll. She went on to complete a PhD at Universität Heidelberg in Germany.

Tasha Tan

Tasha was one of our CEISMIC volunteers in 2017, and helped with describing and geo-locating content for the archive.  She is a UC student, currently studying Engineering.

Saskia van der Wal

Saskia’s 2017 PACE 395 internship with the Lab was part of the Canterbury Roll project. One of her main tasks was the compilation of a list of all of the historical figures mentioned in the Roll, and identifying where the same figure was mentioned in multiple places.

Julian Vesty

Julian was a volunteer with the Lab in 2017 and helped to mark up digitised Roy Bruce letters – a collection of correspondence sent back to New Zealand during World War 1 by Major Roy Bruce of 8th Squadron, Canterbury Mounted Rifles.

Lucy-Jane Walsh

Lucy-Jane is a graduate of the English Department at the University of Canterbury. She developed an interest in digital archiving in Paul Millar’s Honours course on Scholarly Editing, following this up with her own digital project on the memoirs of a Canterbury doctor. Lucy-Jane was the programme’s first Digital Content Analyst, and in early 2107 moved on to a software development role with Mish Guru.

Brooke Maslin

Brooke was one of our CEISMIC volunteers in 2016, and helped with the describing of content for the archive. She currently studying towards a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Media and Communications and minoring in English and Entrepreneurship, with plans to move into the world of media, news and public relations.

Brad McNeur

Brad’s background is in Computer Science. He began volunteering with CEISMIC in mid-2016 and helped the team to develop apps and scripts that automate parts of the archival process, making it easier to upload new content to QuakeStudies. Brad went on to secure a position working with ICTS at UC.

Aidan Millow

Aidan began volunteering with the Friends of CEISMIC program in mid-2016. Aidan has a background in IT, and along with Brad, put these skills to use helping the team to develop apps and scripts that automate parts of the archival process, making it easier to upload new content to QuakeStudies.

Toril Orlesky

Toril is a former CEISMIC volunteer. She has a background in film, so was able to put her skills to use by filming the 2016 Seismics in the City conference for us, enabling the presentations to be archived in QuakeStudies. She also helped us prepare other contributed videos to be uploaded to the archive.

Jane Ross

Jane was one of our CEISMIC volunteers, helping with the describing of content for the archive. As an editor for many years, she is also an adept proofreader. She says that volunteering for CEISMIC made her feel more connected to the city and to all who have struggled since the quakes.

Andrew Dean

Andrew was a Digital Content Analyst for CEISMIC in the early days of the programme, and worked primarily on the Environment Canterbury collection. Andrew was awarded a Rhodes scholarship in 2012 and completed a Doctorate in English Literature at the University of Oxford.