Melanie Swalwell

Professor Melanie Swalwell is a leading scholar in digital media heritage at Swinburne University of Technology, affiliated with the School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education. She leads the Digital Heritage Lab and is Principal Investigator on multiple Australian Research Council (ARC) projects focused on preserving digital games and media art. Her work bridges academia, cultural institutions (such as ACMI and RMIT), and the public through exhibitions, policy reports, and media engagement.

Her research interests include digital preservation, media archaeology, videogame history, and the cultural significance of obsolete computing technologies. She explores how complex digital artifacts—like 1980s and 1990s Australian videogames and interactive media artworks—can be conserved, accessed, and studied using emulation and digital infrastructure. Her work emphasizes community, national identity, and vernacular digital practices.

Her recent publications reflect a strong trajectory in digital heritage, focusing on emulation (EaaSi), archival methodologies, and the cultural history of home computing. Themes include the democratization of digital creation, the fragility of born-digital works, and collaborative preservation across GLAM sectors. She has published with MIT Press, Palgrave, and Routledge, and her book Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality is a foundational text in the field.

• ARC Future Fellow (2014–2018)
• Lead on multiple ARC Linkage and LIEF projects including 'Play It Again' and 'Archiving Australian Media Arts'
• Chair of SIGCIS (Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society)

She supervises doctoral and master’s students in areas such as media art conservation, hardware hacking, and cross-cultural computing history. Her grants involve partnerships with national institutions to build emulation infrastructure and train heritage professionals. She also manages the Digital Heritage Lab, which houses vintage computing systems for research and preservation.