University: UL
Dr. Nora O’Murchú
Nora O’ Murchú is an Irish curator, writer, and researcher whose work examines how digital infrastructures shape culture, politics, and collective life. Her practice engages the ontology of computation, tracing how technical systems organise power, extract value, and condition social and affective experience. Working across exhibitions, publications, and research, she investigates the infrastructures and interfaces that mediate relations between people, images, and technology, and how these systems produce new material and political realities.
Her writing spans critical essays, academic journals, artists’ books, and exhibition catalogues, addressing the cultural and political stakes of contemporary computation. She is co-editor of Are You a Software Update? (2025) and A Short Incomplete History of Technologies That Scale (2023). Her texts have appeared in The Journal of Curatorial Studies, OVER Journal, and IEEE MultiMedia, as well as in commissioned publications for MMCA Seoul, the National Asian Culture Center, the Ars Electronica Prix catalogue, and Kerber Verlag.
From 2020 to 2024, she served as Artistic Director of transmediale in Berlin, where she developed a curatorial framework spanning exhibitions, publications, and public programmes. She is Professor at the University of Limerick.
Her current work focuses on two major projects. How to Read an Image, developed for FACT Liverpool, approaches contemporary image cultures as infrastructural systems that shape perception, belief, and political agency. Through exhibitions, newly commissioned works, and research, it situates the image as an operational and affective form embedded in systems of governance. In parallel, she is writing Irish Cosmotechnics: Towards Collective Technologies, which repositions technological systems through situated and collective frameworks, drawing from Irish contexts to challenge dominant narratives of computation.
Marco Krumery
PhD Researcher
PhD Researcher supervised by professor Tiziana Margaria
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Dr. Mark Marshall
Dr. Mark Marshall
Faculty of Science and Engineering
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Vanita NaNa
PhD Researcher
Supervised by: Dr. Mark Marshall
Omayma El Haji
PhD Researcher
Supervised by : Dr. Christina Morin
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Cailean Finn
PhD Researcher
Supervised by: Professor Mike Hinchey, Dr. Nora O’Murchu
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Dr. Catherine Porter
Catherine Porter is Head of Subject and Associate Professor in Geography at the University of Limerick. She is a historical geographer with research interests in geospatial technologies and mixed-method approaches for analysing and interpreting early source material. She specialises in the cultural narratives of texts, focusing on maps of Ireland from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. She has worked on projects funded by the European Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Heritage Council (Ireland), and the J B Harley Trust, for which she was awarded the J. B. Harley Research Fellowship in the History of Cartography. Catherine is the Research Ireland PI on ‘OS200: digitally re-mapping Ireland’s Ordnance Survey Heritage’ and the Heritage Council funded project, ‘Locating Benchmarks, Preserving Heritage’. You can view her full research profile here.
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Dr. Christina Morin
Christina Morin is Professor in English and Assistant Dean of Research for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Limerick. She is the author of The Gothic Novel in Ireland, c. 1760-1829 (2018) and Charles Robert Maturin and the Haunting of Irish Romantic Fiction (2011), and co-editor of the collections Traveling Irishness in the Long Nineteenth Century (with Marguérite Corporaal, 2017) and Irish Gothics: Genres, Forms, Modes and Traditions (with Niall Gillespie, 2014). Recent publications include a special issue of the Irish University Review on ‘Irish Gothic Studies Today’ (2023; co-edited with Elle Scheible) and Irish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (2023; co-edited with Jarlath Killeen). Tina is Chair of the International Association of Irish Literatures (IASIL) and co-editor of Eighteenth-Century Ireland. You can view her full research profile here.
Salma Mekaoui
PhD Researcher
Salma Mekaoui received her Master’s degree in Intelligent Systems and Networks from the Faculty of Sciences and Technology (FST) in Fes, Morocco. Prior to beginning her Ph.D., she worked as a Java developer, gaining valuable industry experience in software development. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Limerick (UL), Ireland, as part of the SFI-funded Centre for Research Training in Artificial Intelligence (CRT in AI). Her research focuses on natural language processing, specifically topic labeling, and she integrates advanced methodologies to tackle its challenges.
Supervisors: Dr. Nikola Nikolov
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Soukaina Rhazzafe
PhD Researcher
Soukaina Rhazzafe is a PhD researcher at the University of Limerick, funded by Research Ireland Centre for Research Training in Artificial Intelligence. Her research focuses on optimizing Neural Network architectures for greater efficiency and performance, with a particular emphasis on techniques such as quantization and Binary Neural Networks (BNNs).
Soukaina holds a Master’s degree in Data Science and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering. She has contributed to interdisciplinary AI research, including published studies on medical text summarization and ICU Length of Stay prediction. Her work bridges theoretical and applied AI, exploring methods to enhance computational efficiency while maintaining model interpretability and robustness. Beyond optimization techniques, she is interested in the broader implications of AI bias, particularly its impact on knowledge generation and the shaping of future information landscapes. Through her research, she aims to develop scalable and energy-efficient AI solutions with practical real-world applications.
Supervisor: Dr. Simon Colreavy
Dhiraj Kumar Singh
Dhiraj Singh is a Ph.D. student affiliated with the Biocomputing and Developmental System Group (BDS) within the Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS) department at the University of Limerick. Under the supervision of Professor Conor Ryan, his research focuses on Interpretable AI and is supported by funding from Research Ireland Centre for research and training in AI. Dhiraj holds a master’s degree in informatics and communication from the University of Delhi.
Prior to starting his PhD, Dhiraj worked as a Senior Data scientist in healthcare R&D. He has also collaborated with research teams from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, and the University of Houston on research within the technology forecasting domain. Additionally, he has played important roles in organizing ML conferences such as ICARTi 2021 and chaired the IEEE 25th International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work in Design (IEEE CSCWD 2022).
Currently, Dhiraj is focused on developing methodologies to interpret intricate and deep-learning AI models that are characterized by millions of parameters. The aim is to bolster their adoption in high-risk AI applications, especially within domains like healthcare.
Supervisor: Professor Conor Ryan,
Josh McGiff
Josh McGiff is a second-year PhD student at the University of Limerick, specialising in Natural Language Processing and large language modeling. As a passionate Gaeilgeoir, Josh’s PhD research focuses on developing generative language models for the Irish language, aiming to bridge linguistic gaps in the digital age. Josh holds a degree in Computer Systems from the University of Limerick, where his undergraduate thesis explored building models to detect homophobic content on social media. Beyond his research, Josh lectures in the Immersive Software Engineering program and runs a business creating innovative software solutions for broadcasters. Aside from academia, Josh also has a strong interest in game development.
In the first year of this programme, Josh was named as one of the Sunday’s Business Post 30 under 30 in 2024.
Supervisor: Dr. Nikola Nikolov