Professor Kathryn Eccles

Kathryn has been Director of TORCH since October 2026. She is Associate Professor, Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director of 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 worked with a range of cultural and heritage institutions including Oxford’s University Museums, English Heritage, the National Trust, ArtUK, and Flickr Foundation.

Kathryn has longstanding connections with the Humanities Division and TORCH. 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 held a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship in partnership with English Heritage (2018-20) and worked closely with the Heritage team to deliver 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. Kathryn was part of the first Oxford-Uppsala Culture and Creativity research cluster (2024-6).

Kathryn completed her DPhil in Modern History at the University of Oxford in 2007.