Katherine Aske

Katherine Aske is a Lecturer in English at Edinburgh Napier University’s School of Arts and Creative Industries. Her research bridges eighteenth-century literature and cultural history with digital humanities and artificial intelligence, focusing on beauty, gender, skincare, and medical literature. Funded by a British Academy Small Research Grant, she is currently researching dermatology history in Britain (1660-1800), while her first monograph on eighteenth-century female beauty is under contract with Bloomsbury.

Research Interests:

• Eighteenth-century beauty standards and their literary representation
• Historical dermatology and skincare practices
• AI applications in digital archives and cultural heritage
• Metadata optimization in visual archive systems

Scientific Awards:

• Career Development Award (BSECS)
• British Academy Small Research Grant

Recent Collaborations:

• Collaborative AHRC/LABEX-funded EyCon project on AI-driven metadata enrichment in visual archives
• Survey/interview-based studies on computational method adoption in humanities research