Project Team

Katie Eagleton, Principal Investigator

Katie is Director of Libraries and Museums of the University of St Andrews. Throughout her career, Katie’s work has combined library, archival and museum collections. Moving into the cultural heritage sector after completion of her PhD at the University of Cambridge, she became a curator in the British Museum developing new projects on global history and the history of Africa, and then Head of Asian and African Collections for the British Library, initiating a number of large digitisation projects, international collaborations, and service improvement projects. In 2017 Katie took up the post of Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs (Chief Curator) at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where she had senior responsibility for museum, archival and photographic collections, as well as digital collections and scholarship. In 2018, Katie was a Fellow on the Getty Leadership Institute programme for cultural leadership in the US, and she has also participated in the Clore Leadership Programme in the UK. She is a member of the steering group for the AHRC Towards a National Collection programme which aims to open up digital access to cultural heritage collections of all kinds.

Maria Economou, Co-Investigator

Maria Economou is Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage. She returned in 2013 to the University of Glasgow, where she originally started her academic career as Lecturer in New Technologies for the Humanities at the then newly created Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII, 1997-2000). She has a joint appointment shared between Information Studies (previously known as HATII) and The Hunterian, helping to bring closer the University’s Museum and Art Gallery with the teaching and research within the College of Arts and make use of the collections. She designed The Hunterian’s Digital Strategy (2017-2020) and is responsible for leading its digital initiatives. She previously worked at the University of the Aegean (as Assistant and Associate Professor in Museology and New Technologies, 2003-13), the University of Manchester (as Lecturer in Art Gallery and Museum Studies, 2000-2003), and the Pitt Rivers Museum of the University of Oxford (as Assistant Curator responsible for Information Technology, 1995-1997). She has been elected Vice President of the Executive Committee of UNIVERSUM, the European Academic Heritage Network (2017-2020) is a member of the editorial board of several international peer reviewed journals, such as the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH) and Museum Worlds.

Susannah Waters, Co-Investigator

Susannah is the Archives and Collections Manager at The Glasgow School of Art, and is responsible for visitor services, collection management and outreach & engagement work. She studied History of Art at the University of Glasgow before completing a Masters in Archives and Records Management at the University of Liverpool. She is a registered member of the Archives and Records Association and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  Susannah’s research interests include the history of fine art and design pedagogy, the role of historical resources in higher education, and the use of archives by creative practitioners. She has worked on a number of exhibitions, seminars and workshops relating to Glasgow School of Art’s historical collections and has written articles for The Journal of the Scottish Records Association, The Journal of the Society of Archivists and the Art Libraries Journal.

Neil Curtis, Co-Investigator

Neil was appointed to the new post of Head of Museums and Special Collections at the University of Aberdeen in 2018, having previously worked in the university museums for many years. He has studied Archaeology (Glasgow), Museum Studies (Leicester) and Education (Aberdeen), and is a Fellow of the Museums Association. He is currently a member of the Museums Association’s Ethics Committee, the Museums Galleries Scotland Recognition Committee, and the Council of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. He was formerly Vice-Chair of the Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel and Convener of University Museums in Scotland. He contributes to teaching in a variety of disciplines, primarily at Aberdeen, including Archaeology, History of Art, Law, and Visual Culture, and co-ordinates the ‘Museum Practice’ and ‘Curating an Exhibition’ courses in the MLitt Museum Studies programme. His research includes the history of collecting and museums in Scotland, and contemporary issues facing museums such as restitution from museums, the treatment of human remains and learning with museums.

Kamila Oles, Researcher

Kamila is an art historian and archaeologist working as database collection assistant and postdoctoral researcher at Libraries and Museums of the University of St Andrews. Before joining the team, Kamila had worked as 3D heritage documentation research associate at the Centre of Virtualization and Spatial Technology at University of South Florida. She holds PhDs in Archaeology from Charles University in Prague and A. Mickiewicz University in Poznan. She has delivered several research projects across research institutions, universities, archives and museums in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Czechia and the USA in which she utilized cutting-edge technology: laser scanning, IBM, and 3D printing. Her achievements in applying 3D modelling and Augmented Reality to the USF Picasso Project were mentioned by the American Association for Advancement in Science. Her main interest lies with utilizing 3D models in teaching and research to make the world heritage globally accessible.