Portrait of Marian Dörk

Marian Dörk

Information Visualization

Marian Dörk is a research professor for Information Visualization & Management at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam and co-director of the UCLAB.

After earning a Dipl.-Ing. in Computational Visualistics from Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (2008), Marian completed a PhD on visualization for information seeking at the University of Calgary, Canada (2012). During his doctorate, he had the opportunity to collaborate with reseachers and engineers at Google, Microsoft and IBM. Following a post-doctoral year at the Culture Lab at Newcastle University, UK, he joined the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam in 2013.

In Potsdam he co-founded the Urban Futures Institute and the MA programme of the same name. Since 2015 he has co-directed the Urban Complexity Lab (UCLAB), a transdisciplinary research group at the intersection of computing, design, and the humanities. Most of his work is collaborative, exploring how data visualizations can become critical, participatory, and context-sensitive media. Recent projects investigate the careful interweaving of exploration and narration in data journalism, science communication, digital humanities, and cultural heritage.

His research appears regularly in academic journals such as IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (CG&A), and Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ). Across teaching, research, and design practice, Marian studies data visualization as a catalyst for reflection, imagination, and transformation.

Projects

GraDiM

Granularities of Dispersion and Materiality: Visualizing a Photo Archive About Diaspora

Un/Foldables

Fluidly Revealing Information: A Survey of 101 Un/Foldable Data Visualizations

3D Stories

Telling Stories about Historical Dress

Interactive Flowchart

Navigating and Narrating Complexity Through Exploration and Storytelling

Klimakarten

From Shock to Shift

Amazonia Future Lab

Connect – Comprehend – Communicate

Restaging Fashion

Digital Contextualization of Vestimentary Sources

VIDAN

Visual and Dynamic Arrangements of Narratives

KOLLISIONEN

Media Collisions as Drivers of Innovation for New Approaches to Cultural Heritage

Intervis

Inter...what? Intersectionality! A Visual Introduction

A Visual Exploration of Two Museum Collections

Juxtaposing Fine Art Paintings with Everyday Artifacts

Topography of Violence

Visualizing Antisemitic Violence in Germany 1930–1938

Visuals for Language

Consistent Visual Representations of Grammar

SoNAR (IDH)

Interfaces to data for historical social network analysis and research

The Fold

Rethinking Interactivity in Data Visualization

Close-Up Cloud

Gaining a Sense of Overview from Many Details

Reading Traces

Visualizing Fontane’s Reference Library

INFORMATION+ 2018

International Conference on Information Design & Visualization in Potsdam

Coins

Visualizing a numismatic collection as heaps, streams, and plots

VIKUS Viewer

Explore cultural collections along time, texture and themes

Visualizing Cities

An Open Platform for Urban Visualization Projects

Raoul Hausmann Collection

A visualization experiment with data from the Berlinische Galerie

Memory Dialogue

Exploring Artefact-Based Memory Sharing

DNBVIS

Visualization of Bibliographic Data and Content

GEI-Digital Visualized

Visualizing a Digital Library of Historical Textbooks

VisTent

Visualizing Urban Data Using Top-Projected City Models

Reverse Information Architecture

How is Exploration Manifested in Online Collections of Museums?

Habitat X Change

Science Meets Visualization for Sustainable Urban Futures

Past Visions

Penned by Frederick William IV

Micro Visualisations

How can visualisations enhance typography?

Probing Projections

Interaction Techniques for Interpreting Dimensionality Reductions

Shifted Maps

Revealing Networks in Personal Movement Data

VIKUS

Visualizing Cultural Collections

Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek visualisiert

What Does a Cultural Collection of Over 7 Million Objects Look Like?

Culturegraphy

Visualizing Cultural Network Dynamics

WordWanderer

Take Your Text for a Walk

Monadic Exploration

Seeing the Whole Through its Parts

Publications

Activities

Conference ● 14–18 Jul 2025

DH

We are in Lisbon for DH2025 with several contributions: Viktoria Brüggemann and Mark-Jan Bludau talk about collage as co-creative design method. Silvia Casavola presents her MA project Stereoscopic Journals, which she carried out in GraDiM. And Kirill Mitsurov, presents a poster on 3D Stories.

Award ● 13 Jun 2025

Information is Beautiful Award

»I Want a Better Catastrophe: A Flowchart for Navigating our Climate Predicament« wins Gold at the Information is Beautiful Awards, which are organized by the Data Visualization Society.

Talk ● 4 Feb 2025

Digital Classicist Seminar

Marian Dörk speaks about exploration and narration in visualizations of cultural collections in the Digital Classicist Seminar at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW).

Keynote ● 14–16 Nov 2024

Cultural Heritage Data & Power

Marian Dörk participates in the Cultural Heritage Data & Power conference in Marburg and gives a presentation about the power of interactivity in data visualization.

Conference ● 11–12 Apr 2024

GraDiM

The GraDiM project team presents their research at the #DHJewish Conference organized by the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies with the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History.

Keynote ● 25–28 Apr 2024

Crossing Fonds

Marian Dörk speaks at the Crossing Fonds Digital Archives Symposium about the role of a shared vocabulary for co-designing data visualizations of cultural collections.

Conference Talk & Exhibit ● 22–24 Nov 2023

Information+

We are in Edinburgh for the Information+ 2023 conference. Nadia Zeissig and Fidel Thomet exhibit Xingú Entangled from the Amazonia Future Lab, Jona Pomerance gives a presentation on the interactive version of the Better Catastrophe flowchart, and Marian Dörk will chair the Challenging Power session.

Project Launch ● 1 Sep 2023

Interactive Flowchart

How can we narrate and navigate the climate crisis? This interface is an interactive version of the flowchart that climate activist Andrew Boyd included in his new book »I Want a Better Catastrophe«. Follow his path and explore our collective predicament.

Conference Talks ● 14–16 Jun 2023

EuroVis

We participate in EuroVis 2023 in Leipzig with two contributions: Mark-Jan Bludau presents a paper about » Unfolding Edges« joint work with Marian Dörk & Christian Tominski and Manuela Garretón presents » Data stories of water« joint work with Francesca Morini, Daniela Paz Moyano, Gianna-Carina Grün, Denis Parra & Marian Dörk.

Talk ● 31 Mar 2023

The Digital Image

Mark-Jan Bludau, Viktoria Brüggemann and Marian Dörk present the project »Granularities of dispersion and materiality: Visualizing a photo archive about diaspora« (GraDiM) at the kick-off event of the DFG priority program »The Digital Image« .

Workshop ● 28 Oct 2022

Einstein Forum

Lamin Manneh (guest scholar during summer 2022) and Marian Dörk give a workshop on »Visualizing Scholarly Presence at Einstein’s Summer House« at the Einstein Forum. As part of the event, students from the class »Decolonizing Data Visualization – Visualizing Postcolonies« present their projects, findings, and visualizations.

Online Panel ● 28 Jul 2022

DH

Francesca Morini and Marian Dörk participate in the DH2022 conference and co-present a panel on »Temporal Topologies: Inflecting the telling and the told of historical narratives« together with Johanna Drucker (UCLA), Nathaniel LaCelle-Peterson (MPIWG), Jonas Rinderlin (HKW), Elton Barker (OU), Christoph Rosol (MPIWG & HKW) and Dirk Wintergrün (MPIWG/Klassik Stiftung Weimar).

Conference Talk ● 22–24 Jun 2022

Dialogues in Data Power

Francesca Morini attends the Dialogues in Data Power conference in Bremen and presents »Deliberate Data: A Critical Approach to Urban Data Collection for Visualization Practitioners« joint work with Tobias Kauer, Benjamin Bach and Marian Dörk.

Conference Talks ● 1 Mar 2022

DHd

We participate in DHd 2022 to present our latest digital humanities research from the projects Restaging Fashion, A visual exploration of two museum collections, and SoNAR (IDH).

Project Launch ● 8 Oct 2021

corona moments

We just launched a visualization as a retrospective on the pandemic (despite it not being over yet). Please, help our research by exploring the interface and participating in the research: corona moments.

Conference ● 27 Sep – 1 Oct 2021

Information+

Together with Yanni Loukissas (Georgia Tech, Atlanta) and Isabel Meirelles (OCAD University, Toronto), Marian Dörk is organizing this year’s Information+ 2021 conference. Registration is now open.

Summer School ● 6–17 Sep 2021

Visualizing Open Access

We are preparing the »Visualizing Open Access Summer School« in cooperation with the Open-Access-Büro Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin.

Visual Article ● 31 May 2021

Inter…what?

Inter…what? Intersectionality! is a scrollytelling article on discrimination and privilege by Hannah Schwan, Jonas Arndt, Sandra Cartes & Marian Dörk. Please, help our research by reading it and sharing your feedback with us.

Online Workshop ● 25 Mar 2021

vDHd

»Let’s visit museum collections! What can we gather about the data?« — Virtual museum visits and reflections about cultural data and collection interfaces during vDHd2021.

Workshop Keynote ● 25 Oct 2020

VIS4DH

Marian Dörk holds the keynote at VIS4DH, the 5th Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities at IEEE VIS → video recording

Conference ● 2–6 Mar 2020

DHd

We are in Paderborn for DHd 2020 to share our latest research on data visualization in the context of digital humanities.

Exhibition ● 6 Dec – 2 Jun 2020

MKG Hamburg

The Close-Up Cloud visualization is part of The Second Original exhibition at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG).

Competition ● 20 Aug – 20 Sep 2019

Vis for Future

Vis for Future is an international competition calling for state-of-the-art visualizations that make sense of the climate crisis and inform the fight for climate justice.

Exhibition ● 6 Jun – 30 Dec 2019

fontane.200

The visualization prototype created during the Reading Traces project is part of the exhibition fontane.200 / Brandenburg – Bilder und Geschichten at the Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte in Potsdam.

Conference Talks ● 1 Mar 2019

DHd & DH

We participate in DHd 2019 in Frankfurt and DH2019 in Utrecht to share our latest research on data visualization in the context of cultural collections.

Award ● 4 Dec 2018

Information Is Beautiful Award

Conference Talks ● 21–26 Oct 2018

IEEE VIS

We take part in IEEE VIS 2018 in Berlin and present visualization research on personal movement data and digital cultural heritage.

Conference Talks ● 26 Feb – 2 Mar 2018

DHd

We participate in the DHd 2018 conference in Cologne to present research on visualizing cultural collections.

Webinar ● 7 Jul 2016

ASIS&T

Courses

Course ● Winter 2024/25

Interactive Information

This course embraces the web as a versatile and expressive medium for creating information-rich and dynamic interfaces. From buttons and boxes to events and animation, students will learn the basic building blocks for prototyping interactive web pages for diverse audiences and platforms.

Course ● Summer 2024

Mapping Cities – Making Cities

Project course devoted to the visual analysis and communication of urban data with the goal to engage in critical reflections about the future of cities. Students of interface design and urban futures form interdisciplinary teams to pursue research and design at the intersection of their fields.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Summer 2024

Data Visualization

In this introductory course students learn to design, build, and critique data visualizations. Lectures cover the basic principles including visual variables, interactivity, temporal, geospatial, multidimensional, relational, and text visualization. Tutorials help create a personal data dossier.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2023/24

What next? Mapping and narrating personal dilemmas through interactive flowcharts

Participants were tasked with creating and illustrating a flowchart about a dilemma of their choice, narrating a path through the chart using an audio recording, and making their creations interactive using a provided template.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Summer 2023

Organigrams for/from the future

Experimental design course on the visualization of organizational structures to encourage reflection and imagination about work and the economy. The course was held as a nomadic seminar at multiple locations in Berlin and Potsdam.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2022/23

Visualizing Cultural Collections

The project course »Visualizing Cultural Collections« (since 2014) brings together students from design, media studies, information science, and cultural management to analyze interfaces and develop new approaches with cultural institutions.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Summer 2022

Decolonizing Data Visualization – Visualizing Postcolonies

Experimental design course exploring the concept of decolonization through the lens of data visualization and vice versa, examining how power structures and visualization design intersect.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2021/22

Mapping Cities – Making Cities

Project course devoted to the visual analysis and communication of urban data with the goal to engage in critical reflections about the future of cities. Students of interface design and urban futures form interdisciplinary teams to pursue research and design at the intersection of their fields.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Summer 2021

Visualizing Open Access Summer School

The summer school focusses on visualizing open access in Germany (Open Access Bundesländer-Atlas) and beyond to raise awareness of this transformation in academic publishing.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2020/21

Mapping Cities – Making Cities

Project course devoted to the visual analysis and communication of urban data with the goal to engage in critical reflections about the future of cities. Students of interface design and urban futures form interdisciplinary teams to pursue research and design at the intersection of their fields.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2020/21

Data Talks / Data Walks

Sensors are more and more pervasive in our everyday life. What happens if we use them to monitor subjective experiences? “Data Talks / Data Walks” is a hybrid exercise combining journalism, data visualization and coding.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Summer 2020

Planetary Scrollytelling: Visual data essays about System Earth

In this seminar, students of communication and interface design have developed visual data essays that take a look at System Earth in the age of the Anthropocene and show practical opportunities for action in critical times.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2019/20

Mapping Cities – Making Cities

Project course devoted to the visual analysis and communication of urban data with the goal to engage in critical reflections about the future of cities. Students of interface design and urban futures form interdisciplinary teams to pursue research and design at the intersection of their fields.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Summer 2019

Feminist Scrollytelling: Visual data essays about intersectionality

Students from various disciplines create visual data essays at the intersection of editorial design and information visualization. In teams, they explore intersectionality by making the interplay of different forms of discrimination tangible through concrete examples.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2018/19

Mapping Cities – Making Cities

Project course devoted to the visual analysis and communication of urban data with the goal to engage in critical reflections about the future of cities. Students of interface design and urban futures form interdisciplinary teams to pursue research and design at the intersection of their fields.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2017/18

Visualizing Cultural Collections

The project course »Visualizing Cultural Collections« (since 2014) brings together students from design, media studies, information science, and cultural management to analyze interfaces and develop new approaches with cultural institutions.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2017/18

Mapping Cities – Making Cities

Project course devoted to the visual analysis and communication of urban data with the goal to engage in critical reflections about the future of cities. Students of interface design and urban futures form interdisciplinary teams to pursue research and design at the intersection of their fields.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Summer 2017

Visualization of Literary Narratives

Course exploring the visualization of literary narratives in collaboration with the University of Hamburg.

Course ● Winter 2016/17

Visualizing Cultural Collections

The project course »Visualizing Cultural Collections« (since 2014) brings together students from design, media studies, information science, and cultural management to analyze interfaces and develop new approaches with cultural institutions.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2015/16

Visualizing Cultural Collections

The project course »Visualizing Cultural Collections« (since 2014) brings together students from design, media studies, information science, and cultural management to analyze interfaces and develop new approaches with cultural institutions.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2015/16

Mapping Zebras – Visualizing spatial contrasts with open data and web maps

This course was a two-weeks introduction to the world of web mapping and geospatial data visualization. We explored different urban and social phenomena by mapping highly contrasting datasets (“zebra”-style), which can tell interesting stories about our world.


View more ↗︎
Course ● Winter 2014/15

Visualizing Cultural Collection

The project course »Visualizing Cultural Collections« brings together students from design, media studies, information science, and cultural management to analyze interfaces and develop new approaches with cultural institutions.


View more ↗︎