Rate My Professor Mitchell Whitelaw

Professor Mitchell Whitelaw is Professor of Design and Head of the School of Art & Design at the Australian National University, where he also serves as Creative Director of Engaged ANU. He holds a PhD from the University of Technology Sydney and a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) from the University of Wollongong. Whitelaw joined ANU in 2008 as Associate Professor of Design in the School of Art, advancing to Professor and leadership roles within the College of Arts and Social Sciences. His career emphasizes applied, practice-led research with public outcomes, collaborating with major institutions including the State Library of Queensland, State Library of New South Wales, National Archives of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, State Library of Victoria, and the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office.

Whitelaw's research spans practice and theory in digital design and culture, treating data and computation as core creative materials to foster insight and engagement with complex phenomena. His interests focus on redesigning biodiversity data through visualization, representation, and storytelling; developing 'generous interfaces' for digital heritage and humanities; and exploring more-than-human worlds via environmental data practices such as wetland sensing and climate visualization. Key projects include ALA Lens (2024), a biodiversity data redesign; Beyond the Book: A digital journey through the treasures of the Emmerson Collection (2023); Roslingifier: Semi-Automated Storytelling for Animated Scatterplots (2023, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics); From Inception to Interface: Ontologies, Data Modelling, and Linked Data for Online Exhibition-Making (2024, Parergon); and The Sound of Water: sensing a wetland intervention through interactive environmental audio (2023, Cultural Geographies). He is the author of the influential book Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life (MIT Press, 2004). Whitelaw has received the 2020 Good Design Award for collaborative work with Geoff Hinchcliffe on the Corley Explorer, and contributed to the Renaissance Society of America Digital Innovation Award-winning Early Modern Women and the Poetry of Complaint project. As co-convenor of the Computational Culture Lab, he investigates the politics, aesthetics, and potentials of post-digital culture. His work has garnered over 2,000 citations and advances data-driven design for environmental and cultural impact.