Despοina Valatsou
Dr. Despina Valatsou is the Scientific Director – Principal Investigator at the Research Centre for the Humanities (KEAE). She studied History at the University of Athens (BA, 1998) and Digital Media at the University of Sussex, UK (Master of Arts, 2000). She earned her PhD in 2014 from the Department of History & Archaeology at the University of Athens with a dissertation titled “The Emergence of New Memory Sites on the Internet.” For several years, she participated as a historian-researcher in projects at the Historical Archive of the University of Athens (EKPA), focusing on the digitization of archives and the management of digital historical information within the framework of designing and creating the Pergamos Digital Library. She has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the “Observatory 1821” research program at the Department of History & Ethnology, Democritus University of Thrace. She is conducting postdoctoral research on “Digital Public History and Historical Culture: Designing an Original and Innovative Crowdsourcing Initiative for 1821” at the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASKT). She is a member of the scientific committee of the research project “The Greek Revolution of 1821: Digital Archive” at KEAE. She also serves on the Scientific Committee of the research initiative “NORMED: Small States in the Making. The Nordic and Mediterranean Regions” at KEAE, in collaboration with the Danish Institute in Athens, the Norwegian Institute in Athens, the Swedish Institute in Athens, and the Finnish Institute in Athens. Dr. Valatsou is a member of the Hellenic Research Network of Digital Humanities, the Society for the Study of Historiography and the Theory of History (EMITHI), and the Hellenic Archival Society (EAE). She has taught Digital Humanities for several years as a University Fellow at the Department of Theory and History of Art at ASKT and previously at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Athens. She has also taught as an Adjunct Faculty member at the Hellenic Open University (HOU) in the postgraduate programs “Public History” and “Digital Humanities: Methods, Tools, Practices.” Her research and teaching interests include Digital Humanities, Digital History, Public History and Crowdsourcing, and Memory Studies.