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Giulia Renda

Digital Humanities Researcher & Full-stack Developer
Cesena, Italy giuliarenda94@gmail.com Portfolio GitHub Google Scholar LinkedIn

Profile

Digital Humanities researcher and full-stack developer specialising in Semantic Web technologies, multimodal cultural heritage data, and interpretable interfaces. My work combines humanistic research, semantic data modelling, and software development to create transparent and reusable systems for heterogeneous cultural heritage data.

Work Experience

Software Engineer & Semantic Web Specialist — /DH.arc, University of Bologna
Bologna · Nov 2021 — Jul 2026
Responsible for core software and data pipelines for international projects (H2020 Polifonia, CHANGES), within a continuous path that started as an intern, evolved into a research grant, and consolidated during the PhD.
  • MELODY (Lead Full-stack Developer) — design and development of a web platform for data storytelling based on Linked Open Data and SPARQL. Managed the full software lifecycle: prototyping, full-stack development, maintenance of online instances, and support for use in master's courses and research activities. Implemented dynamic components for querying, HTML rendering, and data visualization.
  • Polifonia Portal (Backend & Data Engineer) — developed the web portal for integrating and exploring 9 heterogeneous Knowledge Graphs. Implemented data reconciliation pipelines, text-search indexing (Sonic), and REST APIs for unified access to distributed datasets. Experimented with local LLM models (Ollama) in data-cleaning pipelines for preprocessing and normalising fuzzy dates. Managed containerisation and deployment with Docker.
  • Digital Twin Aldrovandi (API & Integration Engineer) — developed a service-oriented API layer for the dynamic integration of semantic data and interactive visualizations in navigable 3D environments and Digital Twins. Implemented HTML/JSON rendering for runtime injection of data-driven content during virtual exploration.
Teaching Assistant — University of Bologna
Bologna · 2022 — Present
  • Technical Training & Mentorship — technical and methodological support for master's courses in Information Visualization and Semantic Web technologies.
  • Technical Training — teaching introductory modules on Internet Architecture and version control systems (Git).
  • Project Supervision — tutoring and co-supervision of master's theses.

Data Visualization Consultant — Fondazione Federico Zeri
Bologna · 2024
  • Data quality analysis, cleaning, and structuring of complex historical-artistic datasets for research activities and exploratory visualization, for the project Il mercato antiquario in Italia tra Otto e Novecento ↗ site.
Visiting Research Fellow — Knowledge Media Institute, Open University
Milton Keynes · Apr 2024 — Jul 2024
  • Visual Analytics & Knowledge Discovery — applied research on extracting and interpreting patterns in complex datasets.
  • Pipeline Engineering — design and development of a pipeline for analysing complex cultural collections, integrating Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), data visualization, and visual saliency techniques ↗ repo.

Education

PhD in Cultural Heritage in the Digital Ecosystem — University of Bologna
Bologna · Mar 2023 — Jul 2026
Thesis: Narrative Visualisation as Epistemic Practice in the Semantic Web: Supporting Interpretive Practices in Cultural Heritage
Supervisor: Prof. Marilena Daquino. Focus on interpretability, multimodal data integration, and infrastructural reuse of Semantic Web technologies, combining design methodology, empirical evaluation of learning practices, and API-based system development.
Master's Degree in Digital Humanities and Digital Knowledge — University of Bologna
Bologna · 2022
Thesis: MELODY: a Dashboard for Linked Data Visualization and Storytelling — 110/110 with honors
Bachelor's Degree in History — University of Bologna
Bologna · 2017

Technical Skills

Python — Flask, REST APIs, Sonic indexing
Semantic Web — SPARQL, RDF/OWL, CIDOC-CRM, IIIF
DevOps — Docker, Git, deployment workflows, containerised applications
Graph Databases — Blazegraph, Jena Fuseki, RDFLib, SPARQLWrapper
Frontend — JavaScript ES6+, React, jQuery, HTML5/CSS/Bootstrap
Data Science — pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn
Data Visualization — D3.js, Chart.js, amCharts, Plotly, RAWGraphs, Matplotlib, Seaborn
Machine Learning & NLP (basics) — Ollama, prompt engineering for data normalization, NLP (scikit-learn, familiarity with SBERT/NLTK)

Languages

Italian English French

Other Roles

Publications

  1. Barzaghi, S., Bordignon, A., Collina, F., et al. 2025. A Reproducible Workflow for the Creation of Digital Twins in the Cultural Heritage Domain. Transformations: A DARIAH Journal Workflows (July). doi.org/10.46298/transformations.14773
  2. Barzaghi, S., Bordignon, A., Gualandi, B., et al. 2024. A Proposal for a FAIR Management of 3D Data in Cultural Heritage: The Aldrovandi Digital Twin Case. Data Intelligence 2: 1–32. dx.doi.org/10.3724/2096-7004.di.2024.0061
  3. Barzaghi, S., Colitti, S., Moretti, A., and Renda, G. 2025. From Metadata to Storytelling: A Framework For 3D Cultural Heritage Visualization on RDF Data. In Diversità, Equità e Inclusione: Sfide e Opportunità per l'Informatica Umanistica Nell'Era Dell'Intelligenza Artificiale, edited by S. Rebora, M. Rospocher, and S. Bazzaco. AIUCD. doi.org/10.6092/unibo/amsacta/8380
  4. Battisti, T., Pasqual, V., Renda, G., and Daquino, M. 2026. Making Uncertainty Explicit: The Preservation of Interpretative Complexity across Digital Humanities Project Workflows. Proceedings of the 15th Annual Conference of the Association for Digital Humanities and Digital Culture (Cagliari).
  5. Grasso, M., Daquino, M., and Renda, G. 2024. From Ontology Design to User Experience. A Methodology to Design Interfaces for Information Seeking Purposes. Umanistica Digitale, no. 18: 53–85. doi.org/10.6092/issn.2532-8816/19038
  6. Grasso, M., Renda, G., and Daquino, M. 2024. From Data Complexity to User Simplicity: A Framework for Linked Open Data Reconciliation and Serendipitous Discovery. In Me.Te. Digitali. Mediterraneo in Rete Tra Testi e Contesti, edited by A. Di Silvestro and D. Spampinato. AIUCD. arxiv.org/abs/2405.15520
  7. Renda, G., and Daquino, M. 2025. Ragù. Preserving Italian Cookbooks in a Sustainable Crowdsourced Digital Collection. Umanistica Digitale, no. 20 (July): 405–18. doi.org/10.6092/issn.2532-8816/21113
  8. Renda, G., and Daquino, M. 2026. Do Information Visualisation and Semantic Web Get on Well? A Study on the Usage of Storytelling Platforms to Improve Data Literacy Skills. Umanistica Digitale, no. 22 (January): 1–23. doi.org/10.60923/issn.2532-8816/21755
  9. Renda, G., and Daquino, M. 2026. Learning Data Storytelling and SPARQL in the Humanities: Tracking the Co-Evolution of Skills. Journal of Information Science (accepted, to be published soon).
  10. Renda, G., Daquino, M., and Presutti, V. 2023. Melody: A Platform for Linked Open Data Visualisation and Curated Storytelling. Proceedings of the 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, HT '23, 1–8. doi.org/10.1145/3603163.3609035