Fostering innovative and open methods and tools in the classroom and beyond.
Expanding the scope and impact of traditional and digital humanities for the contemporary world.
Thinking critically about the role and design of technology, data and the social sciences in our lives and learning.
Promoting openness, access, and diversity in technology, and education in service of an equitable society.
Promoting change in schools, museums, libraries, and other organizations.
Advocating for new forms of scholarly communications, including blogging, multimedia, open publishing, and academic journals and presses.
Mark J. V. Olson is Associate Professor of the Practice of Visual & Media Studies at Duke University and a founding member of the Wired! Lab. His research and teaching focus on the historical and contemporary entanglements of medical practice and media technologies, as well as on the affordances of emerging technologies for the analysis and exhibition of historical material culture. He is currently collaborating with the Nasher Museum of Art on expanding their engagements with interactive media and developing an infrastructure for constructing immersive virtual exhibition experiences. He also collaborates with Duke’s History of Medicine Collection and Department of Radiology on the micro-CT scanning and digital reconstruction of Duke’s ivory manikin collection.
More broadly, Olson is interested in cultivating literacies in “critical making”—drawing on the critical and analytic repertoires of the theoretical and historical humanities while cultivating a deep understanding of and proficient practice with computational media, from code to circuit design to photogrammetry. A longtime contributor to the field of digital humanities, Olson is the former Director of New Media & Information Technologies for HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Sciences & Technology Advanced Collaboratory) and the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary & International Studies. He received his MA and PhD in Communication Studies and graduate certificate in Cultural Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
