Deb Verhoeven

Deb Verhoeven is Professor and Chair of Media and Communication at Deakin University. Until 2011 she held the role of Director of the AFI Research Collection at RMIT. A writer, broadcaster, film critic and commentator, Verhoeven is the author of more than 50 journal articles and book chapters. Her most recent book is Jane Campion published in 2009 by Routledge, a detailed case study of the commercial and cultural role of the auteur in the contemporary film industry.
In 2008 Verhoeven was appointed inaugural Deputy Chair, National Film and Sound Archive (Aust.). In 2011 she was elected to the inaugural committee of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH). She served as Chair of the 2015 Digital Humanities conference.
Verhoeven’s principal research interest lies in extending the limits of conventional film studies; exploring the intersection between cinema studies and other disciplines such as history, information management, geo-spatial science, statistics, urban studies and economics. Professor Verhoeven is a leading proponent of the Digital Humanities in Australia. Her recent research has addressed the vast amounts of newly available ‘cultural data’ that has enabled unprecedented computational analysis in the humanities. In addition to scholarly publications and media appearances, she has focused on the development of online research resources such as the Cinema and Audiences Research Project (CAARP) database, an ongoing exploration of big cultural data (kinomatics) and The Ultimate Gig Guide (TUGG) an online archive of live music information.
She is the Director of the Humanities Networked Infrastructure (HuNI) project, a national linked data initiative that will unite and unlock Australia's cultural datasets. The project is funded by NeCTAR (National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources). HuNI is a national Virtual Laboratory project developed as part of the Australian government’s NeCTAR (National e-Research Collaboration Tools and Resources) program. HuNI combines information from 31 of Australia’s most significant cultural datasets. These datasets comprise more than a million authoritative records relating to the people, organisations, objects and events that make up Australia's abundant cultural heritage. HuNI also enables researchers to work with and share this large-scale aggregation of cultural information. HuNI was developed as a partnership between 13 public institutions, led by Deakin University.
In 2013 Professor Verhoeven initiated Research My World collaboration between Deakin University and the crowdfunding platform Pozible to pilot the micro-financing of university research. On the basis of this initiative Verhoeven was recognised by Campus Review as Australia’s most innovative academic.
A former CEO of the Australian Film Institute, Professor Verhoeven is a member of the Australian Film Critics Association, the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique (FIPRESCI), an Honorary Life Member of Women in Film and Television, an executive member of the International Cinema Audiences Research Group (ICARG), and a founding member of the Screen Economics Research Group (SERG). As a film critic Verhoeven is a regular critical contributor to various programs on ABC Radio National and appeared fortnightly on the high rating Jon Faine program on ABC Local Radio for 7 years. She was film critic for The Melbourne Times for 6 years and ran film programs on various public radio stations around Melbourne for many years prior to this.
Deb Verhoeven has an active role in film publishing. Until 2012 was Chair of the widely read film journal Senses of Cinema and was Editor for the journal Studies in Australasian Cinema (Intellect) in 2009/10.
Verhoeven’s recent awards and fellowships include:
2014 Winner (HuNI), Council of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) Audience Award
2010 Winner (bonza), Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) Awards
2009/2010 Honorary Creative Fellowship, State Library of Victoria
2007 Visiting Professor, Som e Imagem, Escola das Artes, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Porto
2006 Media Star Award (Most Media Appearances), RMIT University
2006 Highly Commended Finalist (Sheep and the Australian Cinema), Film and History Research and Writing Awards
2006 Best Australian Cinema Book 2006-7 (Sheep and the Australian Cinema), Australian Film Critic’s Association

• Jane Campion, Routledge: London & New York, 2009
• Sheep and the Australian Cinema, Melbourne University Press: Melbourne, 2006
• Twin Peeks: Australian and New Zealand Feature Films, Damned Publishing: Melbourne, 1999

• 2014 HuNI: Helping Researchers Get Lucky, Video
• 2014 Big Data at the Movies, The Conversation
• 2014 Only at the Movies: Home Truths About Cinema Ticket Pricing, The Conversation
• 2013 Short on Grant Money? Five Tips for Crowdfunding Success (Most Media Appearances), The Conversation