Vera Yakupova, PhD Researcher, Trinity College Dublin (CLS-INFRA)
We’re excited to present the third post in our special four-part blog series featuring insights from DARIAH-IE’s 2025 Early Career Researcher Bursary awardees.
DARIAH-IE was delighted to be able to support four Early Career Researchers to attend the DARIAH Annual Event, which took place in Göttingen, Germany in June 2025. The event was attended by almost 200 participants from across Europe, with 20 presentations, plus posters, over the course of the 3 days. As well as attending the event and benefiting from the networking and learning it offered, the awardees were given the opportunity to provide a short blog about their own work to share with fellow Irish Digital Humanities researchers on the DARIAH-IE website. These blog posts will be published every fortnight for the next few weeks.
Blog post by Vera Yakupova, PhD Researcher, Trinity College Dublin (CLS-INFRA)
From countless headlines to boardroom discussions, artificial intelligence has become the word on nearly everyone’s lips. Ever since the launches of new models like ChatGPT4, Gemini 2.5 and many other AI models, we have already observed societal shifts in our behaviour, productivity, economy, but also privacy. In science fiction literature, however, discussions of potential societal impacts of these technologies are not that recent, as fiction writers of the past had the advantage of being able to use imagination to fill the gaps which the technology at that time was still unable to achieve. My PhD research focuses on how characters behave and feel in surveillance systems narrated in science fiction literature, comparing literature in English, German, and Russian.
What can humanities research, in particular literature, teach us about the technologically driven societies we are building today, especially when it comes to AI surveillance and privacy? This is the core question that drives my doctoral research, which examines how surveillance systems, often powered by artificial intelligence, are imagined, accepted, or resisted in science fiction narratives across different cultural contexts.
This question lies at the intersection between the human and the digital on a content level, meaning, what do the humanities have to say about how we will engage and respond to technology. On top of that, before starting my PhD, I worked for CLS INFRA, the Computational Literary Studies Infrastructure. Computational literary studies is the analysis of literature with digital methods, and is thus a subject of the Digital Humanities. I was thrilled to receive the DARIAH travel bursary to attend the DARIAH 2025 annual event, as going to the annual event of a major DH infrastructure and network in Europe was sure to be an insightful and enriching experience for me.
The 2025 theme of “The Past: Storytelling in the Digital Age” resonated deeply with my work, I found myself reflecting on the dual role of science fiction: as both a mode of critique and a powerful storytelling device for technological development. While my work often explores how the past, especially in the form of science fiction, imagines our future, the conference showed me a different perspective. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing how present and future technologies can be used to narrate the past. Some projects used e.g. virtual reality or video games to bring history to life, allowing users to explore cultural heritage sites or engage with the past through a gamified educational experience. However, the very act of using new technology to study the past forces us to look ahead. This practice compels us to consider our responsibilities regarding education, fair data management, and the power of technology. In this way, the past and present are in constant dialogue. The past teaches us about our technological present, while our current technology illuminates the past in unprecedented ways.
Panels on multilingualism, data sovereignty, and infrastructure helped me reframe questions around access, authority, and cultural specificity in my own corpus design. More broadly, the event reminded me that Digital Humanities is not just about tools, but also about community, imagination, and the ethical frameworks we bring to our work. In a time when real-world technological systems are evolving faster than public understanding or legal regulation can keep up, project work daring to embrace new technologies and up-to-date digital infrastructural discussion, all the while showing best practices of doing so, is important for the future of research in a digitalised world. Stories, both fictional and scholarly, can offer space for critical reflection and ethical regulation in a fast changing world.
Biographical note
Vera Yakupova is a PhD researcher at Trinity College Dublin in the Digital Humanities department, focusing on privacy and surveillance in science fiction literature, working with traditional as well as digital methods in literary studies. Between 2022-2025, Vera Yakupova was a research assistant for the CLS INFRA (Computational Literary Studies Project) within Prof. Jennifer Edmond’s research group, based at the Centre for Digital Humanities at TCD. She obtained her MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies at Trinity College Dublin (2021-2022) while expanding her research interest into the Digital Humanities and Computational Literary Studies. Her BA was in Interdisciplinary American Studies at the University of Tuebingen, Germany, where she worked as a research assistant at the department for English Literatures and cultures in Prof. Matthias Bauer’s and Prof. Angelika Zirker’s research group (2018-2021).
