ProfDeb Verhoeven

Deb Verhoeven is Associate Dean of Engagement and Innovation at the University of Technology Sydney. Before this she was Professor of Media and Communication at Deakin University. Until 2011 she held the role of director of the AFI Research Collection at RMIT. A writer, broadcaster, film critic and commentator, Verhoeven is the author of more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. Her most recent book is Jane Campion published in 2009 by Routledge, a detailed case study of the commercial and cultural role of the auteur in the contemporary film industry.

In 2008 Verhoeven was appointed inaugural deputy chair, National Film and Sound Archive (Aust.). In 2011 she was elected to the inaugural committee of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH). She served as chair of the 2015 Digital Humanities conference. She is the Director of the Humanities Networked Infrastructure project, a public virtual laboratory that combines data from may Australian cultural and research collections.

Verhoeven is a leading proponent of the digital humanities in Australia. Her recent research has addressed the vast amounts of newly available 'cultural data' that has enabled unprecedented computational analysis in the humanities. In addition to scholarly publications and media appearances, she has focused on the development of online research resources such as the Cinema and Audiences Research Project (CAARP) database, an ongoing exploration of big cultural data (kinomatics) and The Ultimate Gig Guide (TUGG) an online archive of live music information.

She is the director of the Humanities Networked Infrastructure (HuNI) project, a national linked data initiative intended to unite and unlock Australia cultural datasets. The project is funded by NeCTAR (National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources). HuNI is a national Virtual Laboratory project developed as part of the Australian government's NeCTAR (National e-Research Collaboration Tools and Resources) program. HuNI combines information from 31 of Australia's most significant cultural datasets. These datasets comprise more than a million authoritative records relating to the people, organisations, objects and events that make up Australia abundant cultural heritage. HuNI also enables researchers to work with and share this large-scale aggregation of cultural information. HuNI was developed as a partnership between 13 public institutions, led by Deakin University.

In 2013 Verhoeven initiated the Research My World collaboration between Deakin University and the crowdfunding platform Pozible to pilot the micro-financing of university research. On the basis of this initiative Verhoeven was recognised by Campus Review as Australia's most innovative academic.