Deb Verhoeven

Before this she was Professor of Media and Communication at Deakin University. Until 2011 she held the role of director of the AFI Research Collection at RMIT. A writer, broadcaster, film critic and commentator, Verhoeven is the author of over 100 journal articles and book chapters. Her book Jane Campion published by Routledge, is a detailed case study of the commercial and cultural role of the auteur in the contemporary world.

In 2008 Verhoeven was appointed inaugural deputy chair, National Film and Sound Archive (Aust.). She is the Director of the Humanities Networked Infrastructure project, a public virtual laboratory that combines data from may Australian cultural and research collections.

Verhoeven’s principal research interest lies in extending the limits of conventional film studies; exploring the intersection between cinema studies and other disciplines such as history, information management, geo-spatial science, statistics, urban studies and economics.In addition to scholarly publications and media appearances, she has focused on the development of online research resources such as the Cinema and Audiences Research Project (CAARP) database, an ongoing exploration of big cultural data (kinomatics) and The Ultimate Gig Guide (TUGG) an online archive of live music information.

She was the inaugural director of the Humanities Networked Infrastructure (HuNI) project, a national linked data initiative intended to unite and unlock Australia's cultural datasets. The project is funded by NeCTAR (National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources). HuNI is a national Virtual Laboratory project developed as part of the Australian government’s NeCTAR (National e-Research Collaboration Tools and Resources) program. HuNI combines information from 31 of Australia’s most significant cultural datasets. These datasets comprise more than a million authoritative records relating to the people, organisations, objects and events that make up Australia's abundant cultural heritage. HuNI also enables researchers to work with and share this large-scale aggregation of cultural information. HuNI was developed as a partnership between 13 public institutions, led by Deakin University. It is now operated by UTS.