Maribel is a Research Associate in Digital Humanities at the Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War. Her research challenges and reimagines dominant and biased narratives in global and transcultural history and art history through critical, postcolonial, and feminist data-centric methods.

Previously, she was a researcher in the Mobile Subjects: Contrapuntal Modernisms project led by Carleton University in Canada, a postdoctoral research fellow for the Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation project at the Transnational Arts Identity and Nation TrAIN Research Centre at UAL and was involved in the Unlock Our Digital Past with Artificial Intelligence (LUSTRE) project at Loughborough University as a researcher. She has lectured at King’s College London, London College of Communication, University of Exeter, and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Spain.

She has worked at The Getty in Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh and helped develop digital publications and projects in these institutions. She holds a PhD in Information Studies from the University of Glasgow, a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Granada, and a MA in Publishing, Journalism and Arts Management from the University of Rome La Sapienza.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Data-Intensive Humanities Research
• Digital History and Digital Art History
• Museum Studies and Archival Studies
• Postcolonial and Feminist Digital Humanities
• Digital Narratology and Storytelling

At the Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War, Maribel’s research supports the development of digital research infrastructure and methods for Strand 2, which focuses on Understanding Slavery in War.

Selected publications

• Hidalgo Urbaneja, M. (Forthcoming) Worlded Narratives in Art Museums as Data. Chapbook of the Worlding Public Cultures Series. ICI Berlin Press.
• Hidalgo Urbaneja, M. (2024) “Global Digital Museum Narratives: Representation, Authorship, and Audiences.“ Critical Digital Art History Antology edited by Amanda Wasielewski and Anna Näslund Dahlgren, Intellect Books. https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789389760_4
• Jaillant, L., Mitchell, O., Ewoh-Opu, E. and Hidalgo-Urbaneja, M. (2025 How can we improve the diversity of archival collections with AI? Opportunities, risks, and solutions. AI & Soc. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-025-02222-z
• Hidalgo Urbaneja, M. (2020) “Online exhibitions and online publications: Interrogating the typologies of online resources in art museums“. International Journal for Digital Art History. https://doi.org/10.11588/dah.2019.4.52672