Dr Orla Murphy

Dr Orla Murphy

murphy-orlaOrla Murphy is from Cork, attended Immaculate Heart Secondary School in Ballyphehane (now Presentation Secondary School) and University College Cork where after a BA in English and Philosophy, with particular emphases on feminism, aesthetics and medieval culture, she completed a Higher Diploma funded by the European Science Foundation in Accounting and Information Systems, where she encountered programming for the first time. Coming back to the English Department she completed an interdisciplinary higher diploma in medieval studies leading to an MPhil on “Liturgical Event and Homiletic Response in Aelfric’s First and Second Series Homilies on the Nativity”, sparking an interest in acts of reading, writing and performativity in a range of media.  Her PhD as part of the Foundations of Irish Culture Project, brought all the elements of her previous research together, evaluating 3D laser scanning in rereading early medieval inscriptions in Munster.

Orla is a lecturer in the Discipline of Digital Arts and Humanities in the School of English at University College Cork Ireland.  She researches and teaches in the Digital Arts and Humanities Program at UCC and in the national, inter-institutional DAH PhD program in Ireland. She was awarded an inaugural Fulbright TechImpact Scholar award for 2014-2015. Named a Digital Champion at UCC in 2013 she now chairs the E-Learning strategy sub committee of the university’s Academic Council.

She is chair of the Information Visualisation working group in the NeDiMAH.eu initiative (the European network for digital methods in the arts and humanities) with Fredrik Palm of the HumLAB, Umea U, Sweden, and vice-chair of the Algorithms group in the EU CoST Action Colour and Space in Cultural Heritage where she convenes the successful international Think Tank series for Early Stage Researchers.

Co-coordinator of the MA in Digital Arts and Humanities and the online MA program in Digital Cultures, she is also the Director of the innovative BA in Digital Humanities and Information Technology at UCC a transdisciplinary BA program working with colleagues in Computer Science over a 4 year program cycle, the first of its kind in Ireland.

She is interested in how culture is, was and will be communicated in all its forms including 3D representation, and in how we read, represent and share knowledge in new networked, virtual environments.