I am a cultural historian specializing in heritage representation in online museum catalogues. My research examines structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data from major institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum. Databases serve as a new form of knowledge mediation. They reflect political and social conditions of knowledge production, including colonialism and imperialism. Algorithmic systems tend to reproduce the most frequent characteristics in these databases. This reproduction impacts how canons and traditional attributions are propagated, often steering users toward privileged interpretations.

Museums curate not only objects related to nation-formation but also artifacts showing non-dominant perspectives. These alternative objects provide evidence for debates that challenge conventional interpretations of the past. Such evidence is rarely adequately covered in physical collections, properly indexed in metadata, or effectively disseminated through online venues.

My work reveals ontological gaps and epistemic omissions in knowledge representation. It helps us understand what we don't know and why these gaps exist. This research contributes directly to developing responsible AI systems. Without intervention, existing knowledge gaps will reproduce themselves in new technologies. Studying the histories of collections is therefore crucial to providing a rationale for addressing skews and biases in knowledge representation.