Hǎitáng
Zhāng
Haitang Zhang | Digital Heritage Researcher | Exhibition Designer | Graphic Designer
Haitang Zhang is a Doctor of Design Studies based in the UK, specialising in virtual museums and digital heritage within the field of digital humanities. Her research investigates how virtual environments can evoke intimacy and emotional engagement through speculative design, spatial ethnography, material culture studies, and cultural-anthropological approaches. Integrating interdisciplinary perspectives from phenomenology and epistemology, Haitang examines how personal memory and everyday life can inform the design of immersive virtual museum experiences.
My research has consistently focused on individual expression within the urban context. Set against large-scale institutional frameworks, such as museums and processes of urban development, I deliberately attend to everyday life and emotional experience at the level of the individual. I am particularly concerned with how, within a social environment driven by speed and efficiency, digital and virtual media can enable people to reclaim their own rhythms, preserve memory, and assert their agency, capabilities, and right to narrative. I also examine how these media might support individuals in navigating spatial transitions without becoming disoriented or emotionally displaced.
Within this broader inquiry, the virtual museum has emerged as a central site of investigation. By rethinking and redefining the museum through critical and speculative perspectives, my research challenges conventional assumptions about what a museum is and what it might become. This approach not only helps museums position themselves meaningfully within future processes of digital transformation but also opens up new possibilities for reflecting on individual value, subjectivity, and the search for meaning in contemporary life.
My research is grounded in anthropological inquiry and cognitive theory, both of which emphasise attentiveness to emotional experience and psychological perception. My interest extends beyond how things appear, to how people feel and think when confronted with uncertainty, difficulty, or moments of choice. For me, such situations reveal the boundaries of subjectivity and offer important insights into how we come to understand both ourselves and others.
This orientation has led me to observe environments, people, languages, conversations, silences, and moments of solitude with particular care. I pay close attention to how meaning emerges through interaction, reflection, and change. This makes me an intuitive and emotionally sensitive researcher. At the same time, my academic training has equipped me with the capacity for critical and analytical reflection. As Susan Stewart reminds us, meaning is shaped through processes of reflection and narrative, rather than through raw emotion alone. Research, for me, is a way of holding these two positions together, remaining sensitive while also being rigorous.
I believe that sustained curiosity about lived experience forms the foundation of both my research and design, and it is this commitment that will continue to shape my work in the long term.
Education
2022 - 2026
Glasgow School of Art,
PhD, digital heritage/virtual museum
Thesis title: A Museum of Intimate Space
2013 - 2016
Central Academy of Fine Arts
Master of Fine Arts
Major: Space Design / Design for Exhibition
Publication
2025
2023
2022
2021
2020
2016
Objects, Memory, and Power: The Transformation of Intimacy in Virtual Heritage Spaces [J]. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2025, 12.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2025.2595083. (A&HCI Q1)
Digital intimacy and the construction of subjectivity: exploring the immersive experience of Dennis Severs’ House Museum [J]. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2025, 4.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaf120. (A&HCI Q1)
From house museum to virtual reality: Memory, space, and material culture study in Sir John Soane's Museum [J]. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2025, 1.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqae082. (A&HCI Q1)
Combatting Nihilistic Perspectives in Contemporary Virtual Museums of the Metaverse [Chap.]. Museums – Places of People, Time, and Memory. 2025, 12. ISBN: 1-0364-6043-6
The Application of Visual Symbols in VR Virtual Museum Narrative [Proc.]. AMPS proceedings series 40.3, 2024, pp. 84-94. ISSN 2398-9467.
Reinventing the Virtual Museum Post-Pandemic: An Audience-Centric Approach to Enhancing Virtual Exhibitions of Intangible Cultural Heritage [Proc.]. 15th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2024). 2024.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1004964.
The Influence of the Soviet Union on the Formation and Development of Museums in China [J]. VESTNIK SANKT-PETERBURGSKOGO UNIVERSITETA-ISTORIYA, 2024, 4.
DOI: 10.21638/spbu02.2024.413. (ESCI Q2)
The Inspiration and Reflection of Spatial Construction of Chinese Traditional Architecture on Contemporary Exhibition Space Design (in Chinese) [J]. Art Science & Technology, 2022, (22). ISSN 10049436/CN33-1166/TN.
History of the Formation and Significance for Our Time of the Theory of Soviet Aesthetic Education [J]. VOPROSY ISTORII, 2021, 12. DOI: 10.31166/VoprosyIstorii202112Statyi04. (A&HCI Q3)
Looking Back at the History, Reshaping the Function and Imagination of Art: The Theory and Practice of Soviet Aesthetics (in Chinese) [J]. Beauty & Times, 2020, 12. ISSN1003-2592/CN41-1061/B.
Initial Discussion on The Influence of Mass Culture Research on Exhibition Space Design (in Chinese) [J]. Nan Feng, 2016, 2. ISSN0257-2885/CN52-1016/I.
Awards
2014
The National Exhibition of Fine Arts Works
2013
Graphic design category of Designnova Awards International Innovation Design Competition
2013
Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication
Excellent Graduation Design Award
The First-class Scholarship
2011
China International Design Art Expo
2011
Academy Award of Advertising Festival of Chinese College Students
2011
The National College Students Advertising Art Competition
Exhibitions
Group
2024
IIIE25: Imagining Interiors - Interior Educators 2025