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Staff Profile

Dr Denise Lengyel

Innovation Fellow

Background

I am an Innovation Fellow at the Centre for Digital Citizens within Open Lab, exploring the 'Ageless' citizen. My work is centered around the exploration of arts-based and creative research methods including text-, image- and perfomance-based methods such as (visual) storytelling, drawing and dance.

My background is in HCI (PhD) and Computer Science (integrated research-based MSc). I enjoy working at the threshold between people and technology as well as working in interdisciplinary teams, which I have done during research projects on subjects such as speech and language therapy training, intergenerational exchange on violence in digital games, games taxonomies, interactivity and interaction concepts, open innovaton and learning about marine life through drawing and the creation of a living art sculpture.

I was also an HCI consultant on the Sonic Dancer project that uses creative technology to remotely connect dancers and non-dancers through movement and sound. And I worked as a software designer and programmer, for example on the Leverhulme funded project 3DBI, that investigated the use of technology for visual storytelling as a behaviour intervention for children with autism.

Research

My work is centered around the exploration of arts-based and creative research methods including text-, image- and perfomance-based methods such as (visual) storytelling, drawing and dance.

My interest is in arts as an embodied way of reflecting, knowing, meaning-making and learning for both the researcher and the researched over the course of the whole research process. I am keen on exploring how this can be supported through technology and how it can enrich our means of expression, our exchange with others and self-reflection.

In addition, I have expertise in user experience studies, receptive and active media work as well as digital games research. Other research interests of mine include (technological approaches to) cartoons and comics, (social) death, bereavement and dying and speech and language therapy.

Also, I am a member of the ACM SIG CHI chapter on "Arts in HCI" which aims to engage with, and promote arts practice and methods to the wider HCI community as well as encourage collaboration, support and mentoring for those working between the arts and HCI research space.

Teaching

2022 to 2024 I taught on the Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction/Interaction Design course (practicals).

I previously taught courses, seminars and labs, e.g. on Collaborative Systems, Designing Interactive Systems, System Requirements and Design as well as Digital Games.

I also supervise Bachelor and Master students. For example, I supervised a Bachelor dissertation on mindfulness and a Master dissertation on "Lines of Love: Exploring Doodling as a Bridge for Communication and Connection in Long-Distance Relationships".

Publications