Yumeng Hou
EPFL CDH DHI eM+
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+41 21 693 88 74
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Biography
Yumeng Hou is a digital humanities researcher and PhD candidate at the Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM ), EPFL. With a background in data science, Yumeng obtained her master’s degree in computer science from EPFL, and a Bachelor's in Digital Media Technology from Zhejiang University. She holds research and practical experience in digital museology, computational archival science, data visualisation, visual analytics, human-computer interaction, media cloud computing, and creative media technologies, with a track record of publications and creative installations in diverse settings.
Motivated by a deep-seated passion for applying computational strategies to preserve cultural heritage and traditional folklore, Yumeng embarked on a journey to pursue a PhD in digital museology and computational (cultural) archives. Her research primarily focuses on China-related intangible cultural heritage and traditional folklore, examining the intersection of cultural heritage, computational archives, digital narratives, knowledge encoding, and cultural AI. Her doctoral thesis centres on the computational curation embodied knowledge in Southern Chinese martial arts and unlocking a multimodal archive for public dissemination in digital and museum settings. Within the theme, she has demonstrated her research through publications in prestigious journals (e.g., Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, Journal of Documentation, Journal on Open Humanities Data, Digital Humanities Research), peer-reviewed conferences (e.g., Digital Humanities, EuropeanaTech, International Digital Curation Conference, AMPS (IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S), International Martial Studies Conference, Young Scholars' Forum in Chinese Studies), and contributions to books. She was shortlisted as a candidate for the Paul Fortier Prize at Digital Humanities 2023. And she is progressing as a Hung Kuen practitioner and studying the art of Italian swordsmanship!
Prior to joining EPFL eM , Yumeng's professional background includes roles as Technical Product Manager at Alibaba Cloud, Digital Analyst at Procter & Gamble, Creative Tech Lead at _box Interaction Studio, and Digital Strategist at NewStyle Media Group.
Research keywords: digital museology, computational archives, embodied knowledge, intangible cultural heritage, martial arts, datafication, visualisation, representation, digital humanities
Education
PhD Candidate
Digital Humanities (EDDH)
EPFL
Oct 2020 - now
Visiting Researcher
Academy of Visual Arts
Hong Kong Baptist University
July 2022 - Jan 2023
Master of Science
Computer Science
EPFL
2015 - 2017
Bachelor of Engineering
Digital Media Technology
Zhejiang University
2010 - 2014
Visiting Student
Computer and System Sciences
Stockholm University
2013 - 2014
Publications
Other publications
Publication in Scientific Journals
Hou, Y., Yuan L. (2023). “Building a knowledge graph of Chinese kung fu masters from heterogeneous bilingual data”. Journal of Open Humanities Data. https://doi.org/10.5334/johd.136Hou, Y.*, Seydou F.M., Kenderdine S. (2023). Accessing a multimodal archive of Southern Chinese martial arts through embodied cues. Journal of Documentation. Just accepted. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2022-0027
Hou, Y.*, Kenderdine S., et al. (2022). Digitizing Intangible Cultural Heritage Embodied: state of the art. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage. https://doi.org/10.1145/3494837
Hou, Y.* (2021). Accessing, Representing, and Transmitting Cultural Heritage through Digital Archives: Challenges and Opportunities. Digital Humanities Research, 4(1), 77-91. http://dhr.ruc.edu.cn/CN/Y2021/V1/I4/77
Adamou, A., Picca, D., Hou, Y., & Granados-García, P. L. "The Facets of Intangible Heritage in Southern Chinese Martial Arts: Applying a Knowledge-Driven Cultural Contact Detection Approach". Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 16 (3), Article 63. https://doi.org/10.1145/3606702
Xia, J., Hou, Y., Chen, Y. V., Qian, Z. C., Ebert, D. S., & Chen, W.* (2017). Visualizing rank time series of Wikipedia top-viewed pages. IEEE computer graphics and applications, 37(2), 42-53. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2017.21
Peer-reviewed Conference Proceedings
Hou, Y. (2023). “Co-encoding embodied knowledge in Southern Chinese martial arts: a collaboration between computists, experts, and digital models”. Long paper presentation at Digital Humanities 2023: Book of Abstracts, July 10-14 2023, Graz, Austria. Paul Fortier Prize (best paper) candidate. [Abstract]Hou, Y.*, Kenderdine S. (2022). Encoding the Whole-of-Environment Knowledge for Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Computational Experiment with the Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive. In (IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S): Design, culture and technology – past, present, and future, June 15-17, Canterbury, UK. AMPS Proceedings Series 29.1, pp.121-132.
Hou, Y.* (2022). Augmenting knowledge exploration using agent-based models: A computational experiment with the Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive. 7th International Martial Arts Studies Conference. June 29 - July 2 2022, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Adamou, A.* , Hou, Y.*, Picca, D.*, et al. (2021). Ontology-mediated cultural contact in Southern Chinese martial arts. In Proceedings of the International Joint Workshop on Semantic Web and Ontology Design for Cultural Heritage.
Picca, D.*, Adamou, A.*, Hou, Y. et al. (2022). Knowledge organization of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive to capture and preserve intangible cultural heritage. In DIGITAL HUMANITIES 2022, July 25-29, Tokyo. Book of Abstracts of DH2022, pp.329-331.
Xia, J., Chen, W.*, Hou, Y., et al. (2016). Dimscanner: A relation-based visual exploration approach towards data dimension inspection. In 2016 IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) (pp. 81-90). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/VAST.2016.7883514