Tugce Karatas (b.1989, Turkey) is a research scientist with a background in design and digital curation. She completed her design education at ESAD (Porto) and furthered her expertise in Curating Contemporary Design at Kingston University (London). This interdisciplinary background equipped her with a nuanced understanding of the role of design in shaping cultural narratives and engaging audiences. Her Master’s thesis explored the curated environment as a site for intellectual exchange, underscoring her commitment to fostering dialogue and collaboration within cultural institutions.
In 2015, her paper titled “Instant City Manifesto: Critical Utopianism” was honoured by the Design History Society at their Annual Conference held at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Furthermore, her inclusion in the World Design Organization’s ‘Young Designers’ program in 2016 highlighted her status as a promising scholar poised to make substantial contributions to the global design community.
Her PhD at the University of Torino was funded by an MSCA Fellowship for Digital Technologies for Cultural Heritage programme. For her doctoral project, she developed digital curation techniques using semantic tools as a central part of data representation and integration for a centralised bespoke RDF database which provides new interfaces for the scientific investigation of cultural heritage data.
She is currently working as a part of the Digital Research Infrastructure team for the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) at the University of Luxembourg where she works on the research data management, curation and preservation of large historical datasets, for example, digitised collections of artefacts, paintings, photographs, GIS maps, and web archives.
She actively participates in the Research Data Management Community Practise Working Group and the DARIAH Research Data Management Working Group, cultivating strong connections with researchers, Research Data Management professionals, and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) representatives.
As a co-founder of Design Atlas, an Istanbul-based creative community, she continues to foster collaborative projects and interdisciplinary dialogues among designers. Through Design Atlas, she bridges the gap between academia and practice, translating scholarly insights into tangible design interventions that enrich cultural experiences.
Furthermore, Karatas contributes to education by co-tutoring the Introduction to Spatial Studies and Digital Methods for Humanities course in collaboration with George Mason University as part of the Bachelor en Cultures Européennes (BCE) program at the University of Luxembourg. Through her teaching and mentorship, she inspires the next generation of scholars to explore the intersection of technology, design, and cultural heritage.
