Naomi Wells

Dr Naomi Wells is a Senior Lecturer in Italian and Spanish with Digital Humanities and Deputy Director of the Digital Humanities Research Hub at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She holds a PhD in Modern Languages (Leeds 2013) and a PGCert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (University of London 2020). Her research focuses on digital humanities, multilingualism, and migration, with a focus on online communities and social media analysis. She has conducted fieldwork across Europe and South America, examining language policies and cultural practices in transnational contexts.

Education:

• BA Spanish and Italian (Leeds, 2007)
• MA by Research (Leeds, 2009)
• PhD (Leeds, 2013)
• PGCert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (University of London, 2020)

Research Interests: Digital Humanities, applied sociolinguistics, migration studies, online multilingualism, and cultural memory. Her work bridges digital ethnography, discourse analysis, and transcultural studies, with a particular focus on Spanish- and Italian-speaking communities. Recent projects include analyzing diasporic digital archives and social media practices among Middle Eastern and Latin American communities in London.

Grants & Projects:

• Lead Investigator: "Digital Diasporic Belonging" (British Academy, £3,950)
• Co-Investigator: "Building a Transnational Community of Practice" (British Academy)
• Postdoctoral Research Associate: "Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community" (2017–2020)

Supervision: Current PhD topics include Italian identity in the Eastern Adriatic, intangible cultural heritage translation, and language acquisition through artivism. She actively supervises projects at the intersection of digital humanities and modern languages.

Affiliations: Member of the University of London's Academic Board, AHRC Peer Review College, and series editor for Transnational Modern Languages (Liverpool University Press). She co-edits the Digital Modern Languages section of Modern Languages Open.