Join us for this workshop led by Dorsey Kaufmann, part of Digital Ghosts exhibition programme.

Come along to this workshop to experience “digital ghosts” with artist Dorsey Kaufmann to discover for yourself how data visulisation can help us to better understand archives and their cultural significance.

This workshop explores “digital ghosts”—data that evolves, disappears, or behaves unpredictably. Led by artist Dorsey Kaufmann, whose work transforms Scottish web archive data into immersive visual experiences, you’ll get to examine how visual design can reveal patterns of digital disappearance and question how cultural memory is shaped by what is saved and what is lost.

We’ll begin with an exhibition walk-through of interactive visualisations addressing absence and missing-ness in data, then create our own visual metaphors using cyanotype, light, and other tactile media to illuminate archival gaps.

Designed for those working with non-linear or messy data, the session invites participants to bring questions and ideas for engaging with both presence and absence. Together, we’ll examine how archival choices shape what is remembered or forgotten, challenging the notion of data as whole or objective and reflecting on the narratives hidden in what’s lost or never captured.

This workshop is partially funded by the National Library of Scotland, the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, with support from the Institute for Design Informatics, Inspace and Edinburgh Futures Institute.

This workshop is part of the Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 6 – 15 November 2025. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. For further information please see beinghumanfestival.org.

Workshop details

Facilitator: Dorsey Kaufmann
Date: Sat 15 Nov 2025
Time: 13:00-14:30 | Free/Ticketed
Location: 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB
Activity Duration: Approx. 90mins

This workshop has limited capacity and so registration is preferred. Participants with tickets are guaranteed entry, drop-in attendance is welcome, but will be on a first come first served basis.

Venue Access features: Accessible toilets, Assistance dogs welcome, Baby changing facilities, Seating, Step-free access, Wheelchair accessible

If you have any enquiries about the events and the venue, please contact us at designinformatics@ed.ac.uk .

Please note this workshop will be photographed, and may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed, please let us know at the event.

Facilitator

Dorsey Kaufmann is a data visualisation designer, artist, and researcher who creates interactive data interfaces and participatory art installations. Employing digital design, data visualisation, code, sculpture, video, and technology; her work embodies the intimate and personal aspects of data collection and use – concerning people’s health, homes, local environment, and body politics. Her research further examines the use of visualisation as a creative medium to increase data literacy and shape human cognition, attitudes and behaviour in relation to the natural environment (see Nature article).

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Join us for this exhibition late and panel discussion, part of Digital Ghosts exhibition programme.

Step into the forgotten corners of the internet with an exhibition that transforms real web archive data into playful, thought-provoking artworks. From vanished websites to fading digital traces, this exhibition invites you to reflect on what’s preserved, what’s lost, and what that reveals about our identities and values.

As the lines blur between online and offline life, the exhibition asks: who decides what’s worth remembering, and how does that shape our shared story?

During the Exhibition Late, the team behind the project will host a panel discussion on Scotland’s digital footprints. We’ll explore how web archives are created, what gets included or left out, and why those choices matter, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the politics of web preservation.

This project is partially funded by the ESRC Festival of Social Science, the National Library of Scotland, the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, with support from the Institute for Design Informatics, Inspace and Edinburgh Futures Institute.

This programme is part of the Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 6 – 15 November 2025. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. For further information please see beinghumanfestival.org.

Event details

Speakers:
Andrea Kocsis – Chancellor’s Fellow in Humanities Informatics
Dorsey Kaufmann – Data visualisation designer, artist, and researcher
Graeme Hawley – Head of Published Collections, National Library of Scotland
Eilidh MacGlone – Web archivist, National Library of Scotland
Parker Kaufmann – Data visualization specialist and web developer
Coleman Tharpe (moderator) – Independent Heritage Researcher

Date: Thurs 6 Nov 2025
Time: 18:00-20:00 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB
Audience: General public (under 18’s must be accompanied by an adult)

This event has limited capacity and so registration is preferred. Participants with tickets are guaranteed entry.

Venue Access features: Accessible toilets, Assistance dogs welcome, Baby changing facilities, Seating, Step-free access, Wheelchair accessible

If you have any enquiries about the events and the venue, please contact us at designinformatics@ed.ac.uk

Please note this event will be recorded and photographed. Video and Phorotraphs will be used for future marketing, promotional, reporting and archival purposes. If you would prefer not to be filmed or photographs, please let us know at the event.

Speakers

Dr Andrea Kocsis is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Humanities Informatics, specialising in digital cultural heritage.  Her recent research explores how web archives can be made more accessible, usable, and engaging through user-centred design and creative practice and how they can be repositories of collective memory. To explore this topic, she has held the National Librarian’s Research Fellowship in Digital Scholarship at the National Library of Scotland (2024–25) and the Archives of Tomorrow Methods Fellowship at Cambridge University Library/Cambridge Digital Humanities (2022–23), and is the lead investigator on the BA/Leverhulme Small Grant project Digital Ghosts – Exploring Scotland’s Heritage on the Web (2025–26), that serves as the basis for the exhibition.

Dorsey Kaufmann is a data visualisation designer, artist, and researcher who creates interactive data interfaces and participatory art installations. Employing digital design, data visualisation, code, sculpture, video, and technology; her work embodies the intimate and personal aspects of data collection and use – concerning people’s health, homes, local environment, and body politics. Her research further examines the use of visualisation as a creative medium to increase data literacy and shape human cognition, attitudes and behaviour in relation to the natural environment (see Nature article).

Graeme Hawley is Head of Published Collections at the National Library of Scotland, where he has worked since 2002. The collection he is responsible for begins with a copy of the Gutenberg Bible and continues to grow every day with the receipt of modern publications across a range of formats, including websites. He finds the challenges of working across centuries of publications in different formats endlessly fascinating, with similarities and contradictions to be explored at every turn.

Eilidh MacGlone’s varied library career has taken in working in the library of John Wheatley College and cataloguing film at the Scottish Screen Archive, later the Moving Image Archive at National Library of Scotland.

As Web Archivist, she has helped the Library’s curators build collections around the online aspects of Scotland’s public sphere since 2014. This has included its news, the Scottish Independence Referendum debate and government information; more recently, working cooperatively with other legal deposit libraries in the UK, including the British Library and National Library of Wales, to build a collection for the Women’s Rugby World Cup.

Parker Kaufmann is a data visualization specialist and web developer with a passion for translating complex data sets into meaningful visualizations that empower users to make informed decisions. Throughout her career, she has worked with diverse clients from industries like aerospace, healthcare, marketing, and journalism. Using tools like D3.js and React, she conceptualizes and implements robust web applications that host custom built data visualizations.

Coleman Tharpe is an independent heritage researcher based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His research explores the interactions between cultural heritage and Generative AI. In addition to academic research, his practice includes areas such as equity, inclusion, and accessibility in digital transformation, data governance, and community and creative heritage strategy and implementation. 

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