Dr Kathryn Eccles is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the OII, where she co-leads the Culture, Creativity and Technology Research Group. Her work explores the intersection of digital technology, culture, and heritage, investigating how tools such as XR and AI can enhance engagement with museum collections and cultural heritage. As the Principal Investigator of the Cabinet project, she developed interactive 3D and XR digital tools to support virtual handling and object-based learning. She has also explored the role and impact of social media and crowdsourcing on public engagement with museum and heritage collections. Her most recent project, AI is not Photography (2024-5), is researching uses of AI in cultural production.
Kathryn has worked with a wide range of cultural heritage organisations, including English Heritage, the National Trust, ArtUK, Flickr Foundation and the University of Oxford’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums. In 2025, she received a Teaching Excellence Award from Oxford’s Social Sciences Division for her innovative teaching and mentorship in cultural analytics and digital scholarship. Kathryn has also held a Teaching Development and Enhancement Award to develop the collaborative Heritage Lab in Your Pocket project (2023-5) which considers how pocket technologies to capture heritage sites and objects can be put to use as pedagogical tools.
Kathryn has longstanding connections with the Humanities Division and The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH), where she is currently part of the first Oxford-Uppsala Culture and Creativity research cluster.
Kathryn’s work has been funded by the AHRC, Google, JISC, and the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, and by the University of Oxford through TORCH, the Oxford-Minderoo Challenge Fund, IT Innovation Fund, GLAM Labs, John Fell Fund, ESRC IAA Fund, Business Engagement Fund, Van Houten Fund, and the Returning Carers Scheme.
Cultural heritage, museums, arts and cultural industries, digital humanities, crowdsourcing, education, impact, users, wellbeing, digital and public history, AI, history, gender, sexism.
Kathryn has a large group of doctoral students and runs a lively Creativity and Technology reading group that meets fortnightly during term. She teaches Cultural Analytics, an eight-week optional subject, to OII MSc students and teaches and mentors students on the interdisciplinary MSc in Digital Scholarship. She also takes occasional tutorials and classes on public and digital history at Pembroke College, where she is a Senior Associate.
The emergence of AI image generation tools raises questions about their impact on creative professionals. This project seeks to work with professional photographers to explore the impact of this technology on their occupational legitimacy.
This project aims to bring together industry and academia to collaboratively develop principles for building an accessible social and technical infrastructure for preserving digital images.
The Algorithmic Pedestal was an exhibit held from January 11-17th, 2023 at J/M Gallery in London. It constituted an exhibit-based research project showcasing images curated by London-based artist Fabienne Hess alongside images curated by Instagram.
My work has been financially supported by UK taxpayers, by the AHRC, Google, JISC, and by the University of Oxford through its IT Innovation Fund, GLAM Labs, John Fell Fund, ESRC IAA Fund, Van Houten fund, and Returning Carers Scheme.
I conduct my research in line with the University's academic integrity code of practice.
27 October 2025
The OII is pleased to announce Dr Scott A. Hale appointed as its next Director, and Dr Kathryn Eccles as Deputy Director.
17 June 2025
Dr Adam Mahdi, Dr Ana Valdivia, Professor Greg Taylor, and Professor Kathryn Eccles are among the teaching faculty recognised for teaching excellence at Oxford.
9 December 2024
OII researchers co-created a set of principles for designing infrastructure that can help preserve Flickr’s digital archive for the next 100 years.
29 April 2024
Five faculty members have received Dieter Schwarz Foundation (DSF) funding, enabling them to begin new 12-month research projects at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII).
ARTnews, 13 January 2023
What happens when an algorithm curates an exhibition? It’s a question that Laura Herman, a doctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, is unpacking in “The Algorithmic Pedestal,” a show she has spearheaded at J/M Gallery in London.
Vice Motherboard, 09 October 2015
In an innovative project, physicist Taha Yasser and fellow OII humanities based researchers are using data from the Every Day Sexism project to produce the first data-driven map charting global sexism
Time.com, 18 March 2015
Technology is transforming universities, not least through Massive Open Online Courses, but will it render traditional universities obsolete? Kathryn Eccles is one of several experts who say no.
DPhil Student
Samantha Jane Pay is a specialist in violence against women and girl’s policy and practice. Her research focuses on the concept of an ‘algorithmic female’ and the ethics of personalisation culture.
DPhil Student
Nancy is a DPhil student at the OII. Her research concerns the public perception and user experience of emerging technologies.
DPhil Student
Shirley is a doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute. Her research focuses on the future of creativity and AI.
DPhil Student
Roland looks at posthumanism in the context of self-tracking wearables and the environment. He is happy to connect with anyone interested in these topics. He loves to cook, surf, and dive.
DPhil Student
Maggie’s doctoral research focuses on AI and creativity. She is incorporating visual art as a part of a practice-based methodological approach to understand how creatives find inspiration through algorithmic image search.
DPhil Student
Claire Leibowicz is a DPhil candidate and the Head of AI and Media Integrity at the Partnership on AI. Her research is generously funded by the OII Shirley Scholarship.
DPhil Student
Fattori's research focuses on the politics of blockchain in the arts & heritage sector.
This course will give an overview of how computational tools have recently been used to study patterns of cultural change.
