Dr. Nicole Basaraba
Assistant Professor, School Office Language Lit & Cult Stud
Biography
Nicole Basaraba (BA, MA, PhD, PGCertHE) joined the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies and Centre for Digital Humanities at Trinity College Dublin in 2023 as an Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities. Before joining TCD, she taught media and communications studies at Coventry University, where she also continued her research in the area of digital narratives for cultural heritage, with a focus on dark tourism. Prior to that, Dr. Basaraba completed postdoctoral research at Maastricht University (The Netherlands) and was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg). She received her BA and MA from the University of Alberta (Canada), and completed her PhD, which was funded by the ADAPT Centre, at Trinity College Dublin. She completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice in Higher Education (PGCertHE) in 2023. In addition to her academic background, Nicole has nearly a decade of professional international experience in digital communications/PR and project management primarily in higher education, but also within non-profits, government, and a marketing firm.
As a transdisciplinary researcher, her research focuses on how interactive digital narratives (IDN) - an umbrella term to encompass various formats of digital storytelling - can increase interest in cultural heritage through slow tourism, public history projects, and can allow for evolving interpretations as well as public participation in narrative co-creation. She has participated in a number of different research projects that involve partners from different sectors including cultural heritage institutions and corporate partners. Past case studies for her research include an interactive web documentary for UNESCO World Heritage Australian Convict Sites, a mobile app for The National Famine Way (Ireland), a policy brief related to the European Capitals of Culture Initiative, and paranormal investigations as a form of virtual dark tourism on YouTube. Her first monograph, Transmedia for Cultural Heritage: Remixing History was published by Routledge in 2021, and she has published over 20 publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, as well as a variety of public-impact pieces (e.g., a policy brief, academic blog post, public radio shows, research events published on YouTube, and manual related to good practices towards citational justice for minority groups).
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Basaraba, Nicole and Cauvin, Thomas, Public history and transmedia storytelling for conflicting narratives, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, 27, (2), 2023, p221 - 247
Basaraba, Nicole, The rise of paranormal investigations as virtual dark tourism onYouTube, Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2023, p1 - 23
Nicole Basaraba, Nicole Basaraba, Jennifer Edmond, Owen Conlan, Peter Arnds, A Data-Driven Approach to Public-Focused Digital Narratives for Cultural Heritage, The Palgrave Handbook of Digital and Public Humanities, 2022, p337--356
Nicole Basaraba, A bottom-up method for remixing narratives for virtual heritage experiences, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2022
Nicole Basaraba, Transmedia Narratives for Cultural Heritage, 2022
Basaraba, N., Edmond, J., Conlan, O., Arnds, P., A Data-Driven Approach to Public-Focused Digital Narratives for Cultural Heritage, The Palgrave Handbook of Digital and Public Humanities, 2022, p337-356
Nicole Basaraba, Cross-comparing the Concept of "United in Diversity" as Expressed by European Capitals of Culture, Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 2022, p1--22
Michelle Doran, Nicole Basaraba, Jennifer Edmond, Vicky Garnett, Courtney Helen Grile, Eliza Papaki, and Erzsébeth Toth-Czifra, Scholarly Primitives of Scholarly Meetings: A DH-Inspired Exploration of the Virtual Incunabular in the Time of COVID 19, Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ), 2022
Nicole Basaraba, Peter Arnds, Jennifer Edmondand Owen Conlan. , New Media Ecology and Theoretical Foundations for Nonfiction Digital Narrative Creative Practice., Narrative, 29, (3), 2021
Basaraba, Nicole , The emergence of creative and digital place-making: A scoping review across disciplines, New Media & Society, 25, (6), 2021, p1470 - 1497
Peter Arnds (MONOGRAPH), Wolves at the Door: Migration, Dehumanization, Rewilding the World, New York, London, Oxford, Sydney, Delhi:, Bloomsbury Publishers, 2021, 225pp
Nicole Basaraba, Peter Arnds, Jennifer Edmond and Owen Conlan , User Testing Persuasive Interactive Web Documentaries: An Empirical Study, Springer LNCS Springer Conference Proceedings, 13th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS 2020), 2020
Nicole Basaraba, Owen Conlan, Jennifer Edmond, Peter Arnds, Digital Narrative Conventions in Heritage Trail Mobile Apps, New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 25, (1-2), 2019, p1 - 30
Basaraba, Nicole, Co-constructing Cultural Heritage Through a Web-Based Interactive Digital Narrative, International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, Lasertherapie der Haut, 2018, pp642--645
Nicole Basaraba, A Framework for Creative Teams of Non-fiction Interactive Digital Narratives, 2018, p143--148
Basaraba, Nicole, A communication model for non-fiction interactive digital narratives: A study of cultural heritage website, Frontiers of Narrative Studies, 4, (1), 2018, ps48 - s75
Basaraba, Nicole, Creating Persuasive Book Trailers as a New Media Marketing Tool, Logos: Journal of the World Publishing Community, 27, (3), 2016, p34 - 51
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Nicole Basaraba, Embracing `virtual dark tourism' could help heritage sites at risk of degradation, 2024
Research Expertise
Description
Dr. Basaraba's research domain focuses on analysing and developing best practices for creating interactive and transmedia narratives for cultural heritage sites. Her interests are in non-fiction narratives, but most specifically in cultural heritage, slow and dark tourism, and public history projects with a global context (i.e., cross border and multinational narratives). She examines how participatory digital cultures and globalisation impact and influence digital narrative productions for cultural heritage tourists (both local visitors and international visitors). Her current and future research covers challenges, such as the increasing production of cross-media tourism content and digital experiences; the democratisation of multiple perspectives on cultural heritage sites and historical events; issues with mass tourism in the preservation of cultural heritage sites; and examining how cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) and other heritage researchers/professionals are experimenting with digital storytelling. She has previously explored different narrative genres including interactive web documentaries, digital history exhibitions, mobile applications, and more recently VR and AR experiences. Her research has included case studies on the concepts of 'digital place-making' and 'creative place-making'; IDNs for the transportation of convicts to Australia; the Irish Famine; European Capitals of Culture Initiative; virtual dark tourism on YouTube among others. Her research interests include: digital narratives (e.g., interactive, transmedia, serious games); digital humanities; rhetoric / persuasion; narratology; cultural heritage; dark tourism and slow tourism; participatory digital cultures; public history.Recognition
Representations
International Conference on Entertainment Computing Programme Committee 2024 (peer reviewer)
External PhD Advisor for Akinboboye Alonge, Coventry University, UK. Thesis topic is - "Mediating Chaplaincy: The Online Mediation of Multi-Faith University Chaplaincy in the Immediate Post-COVID19 Pandemic Period 2020 to 2022"
Memberships
Fellow of Advance HE
Electronic Literature Organisation