Dr María Mencía
- Kingston School of Art
- Department of Journalism, Publishing and Media
- School of Creative and Cultural Industries
- Penrhyn Road
Associate Professor, PGR Coordinator Department of Journalism, Publishing and Media, Course Leader BA Media and Communication
About
I am an artist-researcher in media arts and digital poetics and the Course Leader of the BA in Media and Communication.
My doctorate was one of the first practice-based research in the field of electronic poetry and language-art (2000–2003). My research is at the intersection of language, art and digital technology. It explores the poetic /aesthetic space found in between the visual, the aural and the semantic in multimodal textualities. It is in this oscillation 'between text and image' or 'sound and image' 'code and image' – in the shifting between these ways of expression – where I argue the poetic aesthetic space appears. My practice has been exhibited worldwide, and is published in the Electronic Literature Collections ELC1 and ELC4, Anthology of Electronic Latin American Literature Lit(e)Lat and the ELMCIP Anthology of European Electronic Literature.
Prizes
- The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature, 2nd Place, 'The Winnipeg: The Poem that Crossed the Atlantic', (August 2018).
- The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature,2nd Place for my publication '#WomenTechLit', (Computing Literature, West Virginia University Press, 2017) (July, 2017).
- 'Gateway to the World': a data visualisation poetic piece selected as example of good practice in digital literature by KVB boekwerk (the Dutch knowledge and innovation platform for the book sector) and the Dutch Foundation for Literature, 2017
Research grants
- AHRC grant 2018-2021, 'Memory, Victims, and Representation of the Colombian Conflict' focusing on women's voices to collaborate with Prof Claire Taylor from Liverpool University and project partners from Grupo de Investigación COMBA I+D, Universidad Santiago de Cali, Universidad de Vigo, España- Pedagogical and Technological University. Other grants to conduct research at international institutions include:
- Information Studies & Digital Design, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark
- Laboratory: COSTECH Technologies and Human Sciences (TSH) Department, University of Technology of Compiegne (France)
- Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Melbourne, Australia (AHRC Small Grants);
- The University of Sydney, Australia (TIES Grant) and Media Research Lab -New York University, NY, USA (Promising Researcher Fellowship by Kingston University.
- Co-investigator "Translating Electronic Literature: A Transatlantic Program in Collaborative Digital Humanities" (2017-2018), a research project funded by the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH) and the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
I am frequently involved in international events, including 17 keynote presentations and I have taken part in nearly 70 conferences, curated exhibitions and led pedagogic, programming research clusters and research projects in collaborative practice.
I am one of the executive members of the Electronic Literature Organisation Board of Directors (ELO) and book editor for the "Electronic Literature" series with ELO-Bloomsbury Press.
Qualifications
- PhD, Digital Art and Digital Poetics practice-based research, Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London, UK
- MA, History and Theory of Art Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK
- BA, Joint Honours in Fine Art and Design, Camberwell College of Arts, London, UK
- BA, English Philology, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, UK
- Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy