Denise Thwaites is a curator and researcher specialising in contemporary digital arts and humanities. Her work interrogates emergent frames of inclusion, exclusion and collaboration, especially as they are re-imagined through decentralised technologies. 

As Assistant Professor in Digital Arts and Humanities at the University of Canberra, Denise teaches into the Bachelor of Arts and Digital Cultural Heritage.  Over the past ten years, Denise has developed, co-ordinated and lectured undergraduate courses in Aesthetics, Political Theory, French Critical Theory and Art History at The University of New South Wales, The National Art School, Sydney and The University of Wollongong. She has led and co-led curatorial projects for This Is Not Art Festival (Newcastle), New Beginnings Refugee Culture and Arts Festival (Sydney), Firstdraft (Sydney) and Next Wave Festival (Melbourne). She previously held the position of Associate Director at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, having also worked at the Australia Council for the Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

In 2014, Denise completed her doctoral thesis under the dual supervision of Paul Patton (The University of New South Wales, Australia) and Bruno Clément (l’Université Paris 8, France). Her thesis explored the relationship between the fields of art and politics in light of different conceptualisations of interstitiality. For this she was awarded the distinction of 'Docteur en Littératures Françaises avec la mention très honorable avec félicitations du jury' (summa cum laude) by l’Université Paris 8.