More About me

Hey! I'm Sara Akhlaq. I am a researcher and with my research I have always tried to engage in academic activisim. I have also always employed my web and graphic design skills in my academic work as well - that's why I believe I qualify as a researcher and a designer.

I did masters in Heritage Conservation and Site Management at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. During my masters and my masters thesis, I focused on eithcal dimensions of digital preservation of cultural heritage. From then onwards, I have focused on colonial, racial and gendered biases that get emtombed into digital collections when they go unaddressed in the process of digitsation. With my research I want to employ data visusalisation as a way of addressing these biases and challenge the power differentials in these digital GLAM collections.

Currently, I am working as a PhD student in Media and Information Technology division of Linköping University in Sweden. With my PhD, my goal is to continue working on addressing biases in digital GLAM collections through data visualisation. Moreover, I am also working on exploring the notion of hidden labour in context of open source software and its visualisation in an exhibition space.

In the past I have worked at Urban Complexity Lab at Fachhochschule Potsdam. I acted as a research associate for the project Kollisionen. With Kollisionen, we made a multimodal data representation platform that included data visualisation, data sonification and 3D/VR visualisation. I contributed towards web design, web development of data visualisaiton module of Kollisionen along with assisting with initial data sorting and massaging of the digital GLAM collection upon which the multimodal platform was built.

If you want to get in touch with me to know more about my research please send me an email at saara.akhlaq@gmail.com or send me a dm on Twitter @alltheakhlaq.