Team

Project team

The RSE CEP project is carried out by the following team members.

• James Smithies
  Professor of Digital Humanities and Director of the HASS Digital Research Hub at ANU

  James previously worked at King's College London where he founded King's Digital Lab. His work focuses on digital humanities research infrastructure. He leads a variety of projects including the exploration of large language models for historical research. He is the author of Digital Modernity: Why We Need to Think Historically About the Digital Age (2026).

• Wolfgang Barth
  Research Software Engineer (RSE-CEP) · Australian National University

  Wolfgang works to connect research communities with technical development, focusing on language documentation and data infrastructure projects. He collaborates with Indigenous communities, data stewards, and IT teams to create solutions following FAIR and CARE principles. In the RSE Capacity Enhancement Project, he aims to enhance research software engineering skills across HASS and the Indigenous research sector by developing accessible guidance, standards, and patterns.

• Mat Bettinson
  Principal Research Software Engineer · HASS Digital Research Hub, Australian National University

  Mat brings experience spanning videogame development, linguistics research, and large-scale digital infrastructure, including a PhD on socio-technical solutions for endangered language speakers and postdoctoral work with Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land. He previously served as technical lead for the Digital Observatory at QUT, overseeing data collection platforms and research infrastructure. At ANU he leads the engineering team delivering digital methods support for the humanities and social sciences.

• Junran Lei
  Senior Research Software Engineer · HASS Digital Research Hub, Australian National University

  Junran's work bridges digital humanities, social science research, and research software engineering, with expertise in machine learning, optical character recognition, geospatial mapping, and archival systems. She has a particular focus on Indigenous and historical archives, and her projects span data visualisation, mobile applications, and semantic web technologies. She is co-chair of the Research Software Asia Australia Conference.

• Peter Sefton
  Principal RSE Fellow

  Dr Peter Sefton is the ARDC RSE-CEP Principal RSE Fellow at the HASS Digital Research Hub. He is an eResearch expert specialising in research software engineering, research data management, and metadata, and currently is a senior advisor to the Language Research Data Commons project at the University of Queensland.

• Louise Pert
  Hub Administrator · HASS Digital Research Hub, Australian National University