Mari Wigham studied Electronic Engineering at Nottingham University. In 2001 she joined the BBC as an R&D engineer. She moved to Belgium in 2005, where she conducted speech recognition research at Leuven University before shifting to applied research at the national broadcaster, VRT.
In 2008-2018 Mari worked at Wageningen University & Research. There she learned to model human expertise explicitly and transparently with semantic technology, and incorporate this expertise in applications for the food and agricultural domains.
In 2018 Mari joined Sound & Vision as a data engineer. There, she worked on enabling researchers to work effectively with heritage data. Firstly by understanding their needs and applying this knowledge in the development of the Clariah Media Suite research environment. Secondly by modelling and publishing data, including documentation of the unique characteristics of heritage datasets so that researchers understand what is available and how to use it appropriately.
At Huygens, Mari continues to explore how to support researchers in the effective and appropriate use of cultural heritage datasets, by investigating the rich description of datasets with Data-Envelopes. She strongly believes that heritage should be accessible and usable. Her interest lies in the delicate balance between making it as easy as possible to use heritage data while respecting the complex and human nature of these sources.
