Mark Olson
Associate Professor of the Practice of Art, Art History & Visual Studies

Mark J. V. Olson is Associate Professor of the Practice of Visual & Media Studies at Duke University and a founding member of the Wired! Lab. His research and teaching focus on the historical and contemporary entanglements of medical practice and media technologies, as well as on the affordances of emerging technologies for the analysis and exhibition of historical material culture. He is currently collaborating with the Nasher Museum of Art on expanding their engagements with interactive media and developing an infrastructure for constructing immersive virtual exhibition experiences. He also collaborates with Duke’s History of Medicine Collection and Department of Radiology on the micro-CT scanning and digital reconstruction of Duke’s ivory manikin collection.

More broadly, Olson is interested in cultivating literacies in “critical making”—drawing on the critical and analytic repertoires of the theoretical and historical humanities while cultivating a deep understanding of and proficient practice with computational media, from code to circuit design to photogrammetry. A longtime contributor to the field of digital humanities, Olson is the former Director of New Media & Information Technologies for HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Sciences & Technology Advanced Collaboratory) and the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary & International Studies. He received his MA and PhD in Communication Studies and graduate certificate in Cultural Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.



Preferred pronouns:  he, him, his

Office Hours

Teaching at Venice International University in Spring 2022.

Regular office hours resume in Fall 2022.

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Contact Information

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