I am a data visualisation designer, engineer and researcher based in London. I work with large cultural datasets, for example digitised collections of paintings, photographs, artefacts, maps, and newspapers.
Currently I'm a Research Software Engineer at the British Library and The Alan Turing Institute on the 'Living with Machines' research project, combining large-scale digitised historical collections with data science techniques.
I am an Ambassador and Featured Creator at Observable.
Before this, I did a PhD—'Timeline Design For Visualising Cultural Heritage Data'—at the Royal College of Art, London in the Innovation Design Engineering department. As museums, libraries and archives digitise their physical holdings—images, objects, texts—the resulting volume of data can be difficult to make sense of or present. My PhD explored interactive visualisation as a way to make these kinds of datasets more accessible, understandable and ultimately usable. I created a number of timeline visualisations for institutions including the V&A Museum, the Wellcome Library and the Nordic Museum, Stockholm. My PhD was funded by an AHRC scholarship from the London Doctoral Design Centre.
I was awarded a Smithsonian Fellowship at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, New York City in 2017. The interactive I developed out of this fellowship, ‘Dive into Color’, was exhibited at Cooper Hewitt in the exhibition ‘Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color’ in 2018. I also interned at Microsoft Research Cambridge in the Human Experience and Design group in 2016.
Prior to this, I studied Physical Natural Sciences and History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.
To get in touch: contact@oliviavane.co.uk / @OliviaFVane
Talks
Telling Stories with Cultural Heritage Data
CUSP, Kings College London.
2021
Maps in Time: Visualising the historical Ordnance Survey
Information+ Conference.
2021
Watch the video
Drawing Waterlines on Maps with Olivia Vane
Observable Livestream.
2021
Watch the video
DataViz Demos with Contest Winners
Observable Livestream.
2021
Watch the video
Lab Talk: British Library Digital Scholarship Department
Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities, IEEE VIS conference.
2020
'Generous Interfaces' panel
Netherlands Film Festival. (Invitation).
2020
Visualising cultural heritage collections: Is the data enough?information+visualization talk series, Fachhochschule Potsdam - University of Applied Sciences.Watch the video2020
Research software engineering at one of the world’s largest librariesKQ Codes Technical Socials, University College London.2020
Designers — what are they good for (in data visualisation)? Information+ conference, Potsdam, GermanyWatch the video2018
Visualising cultural heritage collections British Library, London. (Invitation).2018
Visualising the Cooper Hewitt collectionEuropeanaTech conference, Rotterdam2018
Timeline VisualizationsMax Planck Institute for History of Science, Berlin. (Invitation).2018
Using Data Visualisation to Make Sense of Digitised CollectionsAt Artificial Intelligence and the Archives ARA Archives and Technology. (Invitation).2018
Visualising the Medical Officer of Health ReportsWellcome Library, London. (Invitation).2018
Using Data Visualisation to tell Stories about Cultural CollectionsACM CHI conference 2017 - Doctoral Consortium, Denver USA.2017
Using Data Visualisation to tell Stories about CollectionsElectronic Visualisation and the Arts conference (EVA 2016), British Computer Society, London.2016
Writing
Heatmap for polygons: visualise overlaps in a large polygon datasetLiving with Machines blog2020
Post-Covid CurationThe Cambridge Humanities Review, Autumn 2020, Issue 16.2020
Design as externalization: Enabling researchBoyd Davis, S. and Vane, O.Information Design Journal 25(1), pp.28-42.2020
D3 JavaScript visualisation in a Python Jupyter notebookLiving with Machines blog2020
Strange Times: Visualising the Oddities of Time DataNightingale: The Journal of the Data Visualization Society2020
Timeline Design For Visualising Cultural Heritage DataPhD Thesis, Royal College of Art2019
Cultural Visualisation and the Value of SimplicityEuropeanaTech Insight2019
Making ‘Dive into Color’ Cooper Hewitt Labs blog2018
Visualising the Royal Photographic Society collection: Part 2 V&A Museum blog2018
Visualising the Royal Photographic Society collection V&A Museum blog2018
Text Visualisation Tool for Exploring Digitised Historical DocumentsVane, O.ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2018)Hong Kong2018
Exploring the Cooper Hewitt collection with timelines and tagsCooper Hewitt Labs blog2017
Using Data Visualisation to tell Stories about CollectionsDavis, S.B., Vane, O. and Kräutli, F.Electronic Visualisation and the Arts Conference (EVA 2016)British Computer Society, London, UK2016**Best Paper Award**
Exhibitions
Curator Computer CreatorThe Barbican Centre2019
Dive into Color exhibited in Design Research EvolutionLondon Design Festival2018
Dive into Color exhibited in Saturated: The Allure and Science of ColorCooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York City2018-2019
Workshops / Teaching
Data visualisation for cultural heritage collections courseN8 Centre of Excellence in Computationally Intensive Research2021
Data visualisation for cultural heritage collections courseBritish Library Digital Scholarship Training Programme2020-
Introduction to D3 workshopThe Alan Turing Institute2020
Visualising Cultural Heritage Collections with D3 workshopDigital Scholarship, British Library2019
Introduction to Creative Data Visualisation in D3 workshopRoyal College of Art2019