Natalie Harrower

Dr. Natalie Harrower is the Director of the Digital Repository of Ireland, located at the Royal Irish Academy. Recently, Dr. Harrower was appointed to the OECD High Level Expert Group on Business Models for Data Repositories, she is on the Board of Directors for the Research Data Alliance's H2020-funded EU support activities, and she chairs the ALLEA E-Humanities Working Group. Harrower has worked to build DRI’s community profile and partnerships, and has been instrumental in securing grants for DRI from philanthropists (Atlantic Philanthropies), European funders (FP7, H2020), and Irish funders (SFI, Enterprise Ireland). She leads a number of leveraged projects for DRI, including the multiple award-winning Inspiring Ireland (www.inspiring-ireland.ie), and the Royal Irish Academy’s contributions to the collaborative DAH PhD programme. In 2014 Dr. Harrower established the international conference series DPASSH: Digital Preservation for the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, and chaired its inaugural conference in June 2015. Previously, she was the DRI's Manager of Education and Outreach, where she initiated and delivered a broad education and training programme in digital preservation and related areas -- including digital humanities, digital archiving, digital curation, and linked data. Prior to her appointment at the DRI, Dr. Harrower was a theatre and film scholar, specialising in Irish identity, politics, and historiography, as seen through the critical lens of contemporary Irish theatre and film. Before moving to Ireland to take up an appointment at Trinity College Dublin on an IRCHSS-funded Irish theatre research project, she was an Assistant Professor of Drama at Queen’s University (Canada). Prior to her appointment at Queen’s, she was a lecturer in theatre, film, and Celtic Studies at the University of Toronto. Dr. Harrower received a PhD in Drama from the University of Toronto and an MA in Political Science from York University.