Recent activities

01.03.2024 - Present

Organising and facilitating series of internal workshops, as part of the project Virtual access to fossil and archival material from the German Tendaguru Expedition (1909-1913), in order to discuss just representation of musuem data of colonial nature

10.07.2024 - 11.07.2024

Organised and facilitated workshop, titled Thinking Through Tendaguru Dinosaurs, with Tanzanian Scholars in order to discuss highliting colonial influences in museum data

28.02.2024

Talk during the event series 'Kolloquium Provenienzforschung' on the topic Power and Agency in Data Infrastructures of Museum and Archival Collections at German Lost Art Foundation

29.11.2023

Workshop on building bridges between data visualisation and VR/3D experiences at the event  How to Represent the Virtual? at the division SFB 1567 Virtuelle Lebenswelten at Ruhr-Universität Bochum

14.11.2023

Lecture during Advanced Seminar Modern History/History of Technology at the division Humanities Data Science and Technology at TU Darmstadt

05.10.2023

Keynote at Forschungsdaten in den Geisteswissenschaften (FORGE) 2023.


Jump to: Past Research Experience|Publications|Talks & Lectures|Workshops|Education|Languages|


Research interests

Digital cultural heritage, Data Feminism, Decolonial intersectional feminism, Data visualisation, Data gaps and biases.


Currently

Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (Research Associate)
Since October 2023
Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin
Berlin, Germany

PhD student
Since April 2023
Chair of Humanities Data Science and Methodology, TU Darmstadt
Darmstadt, Germany


Past Research Experience

Researcher
August 2022 - April 2023
Linköping University
Norrköping, Sweden

Research Associate
May 2020 - May 2022
Urban Complexity Lab, Fachhochschule Potsdam
Potsdam, Germany

Student Research Assistant
May 2019 - April 2020
Competence Centre Cultural Heritage Digitization, Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD
Darmstadt, Germany

Student Assistant
January 2017 - March 2019
European Centre for Information and Communication Technologies (EICT) GmbH
Berlin, Germany


Publications

Sara Akhlaq, Arran Ridley, Mark-Jan Bludau and Marian Dörk. Data Montage: Towards Coherence in Multimodal Data Representation. DH Benelux 2022: RE-MIX. Creation and alteration in DH, June 2022.

Akhlaq, Sara, de Günther, Sabine, Kreiseler, Sarah, & Dörk, Marian. (2021, December 21).Let's visit museum collections: What can we gather about the data?. vDHd 2021 Experimente (vDHd), virtuell.

Franco, F., Akhlaq, S., Mitchell, B., & Searleman, J. (September, 2021)Sisters of Code. Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Conference.

Sara Akhlaq & Clara Rellensmann. (August, 2018).From Church to Mosque to Museum, Influence of Religious Ideologies on Hagia Sophia. Heritage conservation and ideologies - a reader.

Sara Akhlaq. (November, 2019).The ‘Other’ Heritage: Hindu Temples of Pakistan. Sacred Footsteps.


Talks & Lectures

Workshop: Organised and facilitated workshop, titled Thinking Through Tendaguru Dinosaurs, with Tanzanian Scholars in order to discuss highliting colonial influences in museum data

Talk: During the event series 'Kolloquium Provenienzforschung' on the topic Power and Agency in Data Infrastructures of Museum and Archival Collections at German Lost Art Foundation

Lecture: During Advanced Seminar Modern History/History of Technology at the division Humanities Data Science and Technology at TU Darmstadt

Keynote: Titled 'Intersectional Feminist and Anti-colonial Perspectives on Museum Data' at Forschungsdaten in den Geisteswissenschaften (FORGE) 2023.

Panel: Digitalisierung kulturellen Erbes und postkoloniale Perspektiven during DhD 2023.

Conference Talk: ‘Data Montage: Towards Coherence in Multimodal Data Representation’ at  DH Benelux 2022.

Conference Talk: Epistemic Disobedience through Counterdata Visualisations of Digital Cultural Heritage’ at  DHUnbound 2022.

Conference Talk: ‘Decolonising Digital Cultural Heritage with Counterdata Visualizations’ at  VIS4DH Workshop.

Panel: ‘Women in Data Visualisation’ in the panel Sister of Code during  SIGGRAPH 2021.

Lecture: Coherent Data Visualisation during the project week at Fachhochschule Potsdam for the Zoophonie course.

Lecture: Practicing Data Feminism: Data biases and Data Ethics during  Visualizing Open Access Summer School 2021.


Workshops

Workshop (29.11.2023): Workshop on building bridges between data visualisation and VR/3D experiences at the event  How to Represent the Virtual? at the division SFB 1567 Virtuelle Lebenswelten at Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Workshop (05.12.2022): Carried out a workshop focusing on exploring hidden labor in the open source software project OpenSpace.

Workshop: Workshop on making Data Visualisation Coherent during the project week at Fachhochschule Potsdam for the Zoophonie course.

Workshop: ‘Let's visit museum collections! Chapter II’ during  Datenkulturen-Kolloquium 2021.

Workshop: ‘Let's visit museum collections! What can we gather about the data?’ during  vDHd2021.


Education

MA Heritage Conservation and Site Management
October 2016 - October 2019
Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg
Cottbus, Germany

B.Sc. Architectural Engineering
November 2010 - August 2014
University of Engineering and Technology Lahore
Lahore, Pakistan


Languages

Urdu (native level), English (fluent), German (advanced level).