On leave at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study: Sept. 2024-January 2025
I'm Associate Professor at the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University and a Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS). I also work as a curator.
I am an interdisciplinary scholar of visual culture, artistic research, curatorial practices, digital culture, feminist and postcolonial studies. I hold a PhD in Culture Studies (2014) and over the past decade, my research has centred on archives as sites of power/knowledge and as resources for critical reinterpretation and creative practice. I work in collaboration with artists, curators, scholars and practitioners to explore problems that are both urgent and chronic.
My current research focuses on colonial archives and their afterlives; collaborative artistic research invested in confronting and repairing colonial legacies; and witnessing and archiving war. I am overall moved by artistic practices as a means for redress and social transformation.
I am working on a book entitled Archival Encounters, which explores how contemporary artistic and curatorial practices engage with and reinterpret Danish colonial histories.
I am proud to co-direct the network "Reparative Encounters: a transcontinental network for artistic research and reparative practices" with visual artists La Vaughn Belle, Julie Edel Hardenberg, Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Bernard Akoi-Jackson and Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld. The project brings together artists and curators from US Virgin Islands, Ghana, Kalaallit Nunaat and Denmark to share artistic practices across locations differently impacted by Danish colonialism. The project is funded by the Nordic Culture Fund (2023-2026).
At Aarhus University, I co-direct the research group "Entangled Colonialites Collective" and the Center for Critical Data Practices. I am also a member of the Digital Aesthetics Research Center, the Cultural Transformations programme, and the Arts, Aesthetics and Communities research programme.
I'm co-editor of several books: (W)Archives: Archival Imaginaries, War, and Contemporary Art (with Solveig Gade, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup and Kristin Veel), a collection of essays by theorists, artists and curators on digital archiving and contemporary warfare, published by Sternberg Press/MIT Press, 2021; Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data(with Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Catherine D’Ignazio, Annie Ring and Kristin Veel), an interdisciplinary glossary of terms relevant to critical studies of big data, published by MIT Press, 2021; The Uncertain Image (with Ulrik Ekman, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup and Kristin Veel), a collection of essays by scholars and artists on the relation between images and datafication, published by Routledge, 2019; and Panic and Mourning: The Cultural Work of Trauma (with Elisa Antz and Cátia Ferreira), published by Walter de Gruyter, 2012.
I also work as a curator, and recent exhibitions and programmes include For Alberta and Victor, a collection of conjurings and opacities, a solo show by visual artist La Vaughn Belle at ARIEL Feminisms in the Aesthetics (Copenhagen, 2021); Fleshing Out the Image, an exhibition by Igor Jesus and public programme (Porto, 2020); 13 Shots, a solo show by Aimée Zito Lema at Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon, 2018), and Artists Film International a group show at MAAT - Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Lisbon, 2017).
I often present my research both nationally and internationally, with recent keynotes and invited talks at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Framer Framed, the European Summer School in Cultural Studies, among others.
I was a founding member of the European project 4CS - From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, funded by the Culture programme of the European Union.
Before joining Aarhus University, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen (2016-2021), first as a researcher within the collective project Uncertain Archives, funded by the Danish Research Council, and subsequently leading the postdoctoral project Archival Encounters, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. I remain affiliated with the Uncertain Archives research collective.
Before moving to Denmark, I was a Lecturer at the Catholic University of Portugal, in the MA and PhD program in Culture Studies (2014-2016), where I coordinated the Lisbon Consortium network. I hold a PhD in Culture Studies from the Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon (2014).
Teaching and supervision
I teach various courses in the BA in Information Studies, Critical Data Studies and MA in Digital Living.
I also collaborate with the MA in Curating.
I welcome and support prospective PhD students in various fields, including visual and digital culture, feminist digital humanities, media and social justice, postcolonial/decolonial approaches to contemporary art and culture, artistic and curatorial practices, and post-qualitative methodologies, such as creative and collaborative methods.
