Kathryn is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, where her research interests lie broadly in Digital Culture and Heritage. Her research programme encompasses work on immersive technologies and virtual handling, digital engagement with museums and collections, using social data to understand impact and engagement with cultural heritage objects and spaces, and understanding the role of AI in our cultural experiences.
Kathryn has been PI of the Cabinet project since 2015. Cabinet is a collaboration between the OII, the Oxford University Museums and IT Services, which developed an interactive, mobile-optimised digital platform to support and encourage object-based learning. In collaboration with the Pitt Rivers Museum, Kathryn led the Open Cabinet project (2018-9), to further experiment with 3D, AR and XR technologies to enhance both student and visitor engagement with objects, and the Cabinet Unlocked project (2023-4) to consider the role of XR in decolonial practice. The original Cabinet project built on research developed during Kathryn’s AHRC Early Career Fellowship (2012-3), which examined the role and impact of crowdsourcing on public engagement with and awareness of museum collections, and to elicit new information about the impact on users and on modes of formal and informal learning.
Kathryn is also interested in the potential for social data to contribute understandings of visitor engagement with heritage sites and objects. From 2018-20, she held a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship at TORCH where she led the Hashtag Heritage project, working with English Heritage to pilot the use of social media data to understand engagement with free-to-access heritage sites. This project inspired the GLAM Labs Playful Spaces project, which also used social media to map playful visitor engagement with Oxford’s museums, and the Heritage Lab in Your Pocket project (2023-5) which considers how pocket technologies to map heritage sites and objects can be put to use as pedagogical tools.
Alongside a group of her doctoral students, Kathryn has been exploring the role of AI on our cultural worlds through the AI Futures project (2022-3) which interrogated the impact of AI on ideation, curation and the visitor experience, using the exhibition as both public engagement and research tool. Her most recent project AI is not Photography (2024-5) focuses on AI in cultural production.
Kathryn has longstanding connections with the Humanities Division and The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH), where she is part of the first Oxford-Uppsala Culture and Creativity research cluster. As the University’s first Digital Humanities Champion, Kathryn was responsible for the Digital Humanities Programme at TORCH from 2014-7, including the 2015-16 Headline series Humanities and the Digital Age. She is Associate Faculty member of the Faculty of History, where she completed her doctorate in modern British history in 2008. Kathryn’s interests in gender, identity and social change stem from that doctoral work and have since found new directions, playing a pivotal role in the Semantic Map of Sexism and Offensive Internet projects, where her research sought to understand how and where sexism is experienced, and to expose the interplay between constructions of sexism in both public and private spaces, and how cultures of offensive speech proliferate online.
Kathryn has worked with a range of cultural and heritage institutions including Oxford’s University Museums, English Heritage, the National Trust, Historic Royal Palaces, ArtUK, Flickr Foundation, and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
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.
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).
8 December 2022
As algorithms infiltrate our visual culture, what impact do they have on how audiences perceive creative content? University of Oxford researchers question the role of algorithmic curation in a forthcoming London exhibit.
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
Laura specializes in emerging technologies’ impact on artistic & creative practices. Currently, she is the Head of AI Research at Adobe and a doctoral researcher at the OII.
DPhil Student
Joanna’s research focuses on junctures between mobile Augmented Reality environments, critical heritage visualisations and post/decolonial historiography.
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.
