Dr Cassandra Kist

Personal statement

From January 2024, I am a Chancellor’s Fellow in Computer and Information Sciences where I am part of the iSchool research group.

My research interests lay at the intersection between cultural heritage and digital platforms, and how their entanglement has implications for processes of social inclusion and exclusion. I am particularly passionate about understanding the implications that dialogue around digital cultural heritage can have for promoting understanding or prejudice across various socio-cultural groups.

Through these research interests I further aim to inform practice in cultural heritage institutions and broader policies around technology, heritage, and socio-cultural cohesion and division. To explore these interests and aims, my research incorporates creative and future-oriented ethnographic practices.

I highly esteem working collaboratively and have partnered with institutions such as Glasgow Museums and National Museums Scotland, and have achieved research funding for related projects. My PhD research was funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Training Network ‘POEM’ focused on understanding Participatory Memory Practices in digital contexts. I have achieved internal university funding to exchange knowledge on digital cultural heritage with colleagues at the iSchool (University of Toronto) and to collaborate with National Museums Scotland’s Collections and Digitisation Team. I have published in peer-reviewed journals and currently have a book contract based on my PhD research with Routledge. 

In 2025 I will be open to supervising PhD students that are interested in investigating cultural heritage/memory practices in digital contexts: the intersections between platform, cultural heritage, and practice and the implications for socio-cultural divisions/cohesion. I’m particularly interested in supervising students who are keen to study artificial intelligence in this area.

Prior to joining the University of Strathclyde I was a Research Assistant and Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, where I also undertook my PhD research in Information Studies. Prior to this, I worked in various cultural heritage positions and institutions including behind-the-scenes as a Herbarium Digitisation Assistant at the Royal Ontario Museum, to front-facing interpretive positions including as a Customer Service Interpreter giving tours at the Living History Museum, Fort Edmonton Park.