Dr Natalia Grincheva

Dr Natalia Grincheva is an internationally recognized expert in innovative forms and global trends in contemporary museology, digital diplomacy, and international cultural relations. She received many prestigious international academic awards, including Fulbright (2007–2009), Quebec Fund (2011–2013), Australian Endeavour (2012–2013) and SOROS research grant (2013–2014). In 2020, she was awarded a Fellowship for her visiting research residency at the Digital Diplomacy Research Center at the University of Oxford.

Her publication profile includes over 40 research articles, book chapters and reports published in prominent academic outlets. Apart from the most recent co-authored book Geopolitics of Digital Heritage (Cambridge University Press: 2024), Dr Grincheva is the author of two monographs: Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age (Routledge: 2020) and Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy (Routledge: 2019). 

Dr Grincheva's professional engagements include her dedicated work for the International Fund for Cultural Diversity at UNESCO (2011) and International Federation of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity (2011–2015), her research industry placement at ACMI X creative hub at the Australian Center for the Moving Image (2017–2019) as well as service for the international Cultural Research Network (CRN) (2018–2020).

Learn more: https://grincheva.com

In the past ten years Dr Grincheva has taught for different universities in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and Russia. Some of the modules she has designed and coordinated include the following:

Undergraduate courses:

• Culture in International Politics
• Media, Culture and Society
• Big Data Analysis and Visualisation
• Theories of Mass Media Internationalisation
• Museums and Digital Cultures
• Data Cultures in Smart Cities

Graduate courses:

• States, Governments, and the Arts. (International Perspectives in Cultural Policy)
• Digital and Data Ethnography
• Digital Cultures

Dr Grincheva's research and scholarship spans across such disciplines as international arts management, cultural policy and diplomacy, new museology and digital cultures. Her research focuses on museums as agents in creative economy, place making and centers of soft power. She explores innovative forms of art and cultural management including cultural franchising and corporatisation investigating their impacts and implications for creative economy and cultural diplomacy. Through her research-creation projects she evaluates, explains and demonstrates the growing role of contemporary arts institutions in urban development across cultural, economic and social dimensions.

Dr Grincheva's research has resulted in numerous publications in prominent international peer-reviewed academic journals, including The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society; Curator: The Museum Journal, Museum Management and Curatorship; The Global Media and Communication Journal; The Creative Communication Journal and many others.

Apart from traditional research methods, such as ethnographic enquiry, qualitative content analysis, in-depth case studies across document/policy analysis and interviews, Dr Grincheva’s research draws on innovative data-driven methodological approaches, including cultural analytics, geo-visualization, digital ethnography and storytelling.

Dr Grincheva's recently completed, award-winning research project Deep Mapping: Creating a Dynamic Web Application Museum Soft Power Map was designed in collaboration with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). The project developed innovative digital tools to map museum soft power, defined as an institutional ability to mobilize the global public, generate economic activity, attract investments and strengthen international relations (Read more and watch a video demo at Pursuit). The project employed geo-visualisation, data mining and digital storytelling to develop a deep mapping application ACMI Soft Power Map (http://victoriasoftware.com/demo/). This web app demonstrates ACMI global influence across five key layers of soft power from mere resources to social outputs to economic outcomes. This system correlates multiple sets of museum collections, visitation, programming and revenue data with demographic statistics and cultural analytics of specific locations, viewing them as politically, culturally and economically defined locales.

Books:

• (2023 forthcoming) Geopolitics of Digital Heritage. Cambridge University Press. (with Liz Stainforth)
• (2020). Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age. Routledge.
  ISBN 9780815369981, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351251006
• (2019). Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy: Post-Guggenheim Developments. Routledge.
  ISBN 9780815370949, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351190275
• (2013). ‘Psychopower’ of Cultural Diplomacy in the Information Age. Figueroa Press.
  ISBN 9780182155897

Special Issues:

• (2019) “Non-Western Non-state Diplomacy.” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 14 (3). (with Kelley, J. R.)
  ISSN 18711901, 1871191X

Book chapters (2023-2018):

• (2022). The future of cultural diplomacy: From digital to algorithmic. In Jung, Y., Vakharia, N. and Vecco, M. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Arts and Cultural Management (pp. C11.S1-C11.S6). Oxford University Press.
  Part of ISBN 9780197621615, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197621615.013.11
• (2022). Making museum global impacts visible: Advancing digital public humanities from data aggregation to data intelligence. In Schwan, A., Thomson, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Digital and Public Humanities (pp. 397–419). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
  Part of ISBN 9783031118852, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11886-9_21
• (2020). Is there a Place for a Crowdsourcing in Multilateral Diplomacy? Searching for a New Museum Definition: ICOM versus the world of museum professional. In Bjola, C. and Zaiotti, R. (eds) Digital Diplomacy and International Organisations (pp. 74–98). Routledge.
  Part of ISBN 9781003032724, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003032724-5
• (2020). Museums as Actors of City Diplomacy: From ‘Hard’ Assets to ‘Soft’ Power. In Amiri, S., Sevin, E. (eds) City Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy (pp. 111-136). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
  Part of ISBN 9783030456146, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45615-3_6
• (2020). Deep Mapping: Creating a Dynamic Web Application Museum ‘Soft Power’ Map. In Jacobs, H., Fischer, B. (eds) Visualizing Objects, Places, and Spaces: A Digital Project Handbook. The MIT Press Online.
  https://doi.org/10.21428/51bee781.3856e5cb
• (2018). Researching Online Museums: Digital Methods to Study Virtual Visitors. In levenberg, l., Neilson, T., Rheams, D. (eds) Research Methods for the Digital Humanities (pp. 103–128). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
  Part of ISBN 9783319967127, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96713-4_7
• (2018). Global PR that works: The Case of the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia. In Stevenson, D. (eds) Managing Organisational Success in the Arts (pp. 127-146). Routledge.
  Part of ISBN 9781315185729, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315185729-9

Articles (2023-2018):

• (2023). The past and future of cultural diplomacy. International Journal of Cultural Policy,
  https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2023.2183949
• (2022). ‘Contact zones’ of heritage diplomacy: transformations of museums in the (post)pandemic reality. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 29(1), 76–93.
  https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2022.2141721
• (2022) “Beyond the scorecard diplomacy: From soft power rankings to deep mapping explorations.” Convergence. 28(1):70-91.
  https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221079158
• (2022) “City museums in the age of datafication: Could museums be meaningful sites of data practice in smart cities?” Museum Management and Curatorship. https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2021.2023904
• (2022). Cultural diplomacy under the ‘digital lockdown’: pandemic challenges and opportunities in museum diplomacy. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 18(1), 8-11.
  https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-021-00237-z
• (2020) “Glocal diplomacy of Louvre Abu Dhabi: Museum diplomacy on the cross-roads of local, national and global ambitions.” Museum Management and Curatorship, 35 (1): pp. 89-105.
  https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2019.1683883
• (2019) “Beyond ‘State vs Non-state’ Dichotomy: The State Hermitage Museum as a Russian Diplomacy ‘Hybrid.’” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 14 (3): pp.225-249.
  https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191X-14401025
• (2019) “The Form and Content of ‘Digital Spatiality’: Mapping Soft Power of DreamWorks Animation in Asia.” Asiascape: Digital Asia, 6 (1): pp. 58-83.
  https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-12340102
• (2018) “Mapping Museum Soft Power: Adding Geo-visualization to the Methodological Framework.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 34 (4): pp. 730–751.
  https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqy072
• (2018) “The ‘GuggenTube’ Phenomenon: Breaking the Boundaries of a Digital Museum Space.” Museum International, 70 (1-2): pp. 166-175.
  https://doi.org/10.1111/muse.12201

Complete list of publications:
https://grincheva.com/publications

I would be interested to supervise undergraduate and graduate dissertation projects that fall within my area of research expertise, including:

• museology: museum audiences, digital museums, museum diplomacy, museum economics
• cultural policy
• cultural diplomacy
• international arts management
• international cultural relations
• data and digital cultures
• global media industries.

I would be interested to supervise Arts Projects, developed in collaboration with the following industry partners:

• Museums and heritage sites
• Digital creative content producers
• Arts councils and cultural ministries
• Cultural/audience research think tanks and consultancy groups
• International cultural relations/diplomacy organisations
• Creative/digital/data start ups and experiental groups.