My doctoral research explores how interactive digital media contribute to the creation and circulation of spatial imaginaries in Galicia, a region in the northwest of Spain. I focus on how tools such as interactive maps, mobile apps, and digital archives are used by institutions, groups, and communities to influence how places are experienced and understood. These initiatives span areas such as tourism, cultural heritage, education, and grassroots activism.
The project looks at the role of these media not only as channels for information but as active agents in shaping relationships with territory. By examining both their content and the contexts in which they are produced and shared, the research highlights how technology, narrative, and design come together to frame meanings of place.
The project follows a mixed-methods approach that combines exploratory mapping, database design, content analysis, and in-depth interviews. By analysing production, representation, distribution, and reception processes, the research addresses how technological infrastructures, narrative and aesthetic strategies, and social functions intersect in the creation of spatial imaginaries. The thesis contributes to debates on the cultural mediation of territory in the digital age, offering a relational and critical perspective on how digital media not only depict but also actively shape territorial identities, governance, and public engagement with space.
In addition to my doctoral research, I’m also interested in questions related to:
Political ecology and critical geography, particularly the processes through which nature is socially constructed. These concerns shaped my MA thesis, Notes from the Silicon Age (soon available here), a web-based interactive essay that speculates on the meaning of nature in the 21st century.
Politics of heritage, with a focus on how heritage is produced, lived, and negotiated—especially through alternative discourses and the growing influence of digital heritage practices. My PhD work includes case studies of interactive non-fiction projects in Galicia and Spain which convey several of these narratives, as well as work on the growing influence of digital heritage practices. Furthermore, in my research on the Muralla de Lugo (ongoing), a World Heritage Site, I compare official narratives with the perceptions of visitors and inhabitants -daily users- of that space.
Visual and digital methods, exploring images and multimedia formats both as research tools and as objects of critical analysis, particularly in relation to how meaning is constructed around space and culture.
Publications:
- Castro-Fernandez, N. (2025). Wild digital bouquets. In M. Le Calvé, P. Beck, & R. Stock (Eds.), Drift. Sink. Emerge. Repeat. Diffracting the critical through multimodal submersion: A catalogue to the STS HUB 2025 exhibition. https://doi.org/10.21428/b49345f3.8775d7ad
- Castro-Fernandez, N. (2022). Notes from the Silicon Age: An interactive project on the meaning(s) of nature in the XXI century (Master’s thesis). Hussman School of Journalism and Media, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://doi.org/10.17615/xyt6-4h20
Conference presentations:
- Castro-Fernández, N. (2024, October 30–31). Nuevos medios, ¿nuevos métodos?: Una revisión de estrategias de mapeo exploratorio y caracterización en el análisis de narrativas digitales interactivas [Conference presentation]. 11º Congreso Internacional de Metodologías de la Investigación en Comunicación (COIME), Facultad de Ciencias de la Información, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
- Castro-Fernández, N. (2024, October 14–16). La producción de imaginarios territoriales a través de las narrativas digitales interactivas en Galicia: Primeras aproximaciones [Conference presentation]. I Congreso Ibérico da Mocidade Investigadora do Campus Terra: Raíces do Coñecemento, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Lugo, Spain. https://hdl.handle.net/10347/40985
- Castro-Fernandez, N. (2022, April 21–22). Notes from the Silicon Age: An interactive exploration on the meaning(s) of nature [Conference presentation]. Digital Humanities Institute 2022: Digital humanities and the environment. Digital Humanities Collaborative of North Carolina. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/work:296
Public engagement:
- Co-organizer, Audiovisual Tools for Environmental Communications, panel-workshop at Facing Fire 2023 Congress, July 2023
- Co-organizer, V International Congress in Tourism Sociology and Anthropology, A Coruña, June 2025
- Co-organizer, Territorio en xogo (Territory at Play), panel at XXX Science in the Street Day, A Coruña, May 2025