Brock Talks returns to St. Catharines Public Library on Jan. 25 with a talk on “Cybersecurity and Digital Culture” by Aaron Mauro, Assistant Professor with the Department of Digital Humanities.

The talk will explore the consequences of moving more of the human cultural legacy online and how cybersecurity culture is an expression of cultural values. Mauro will describe how humanities researchers are protecting and preserving digital culture and how a human approach to cybersecurity helps people to cope with ever-evolving risks online.

The academic discipline of digital humanities involves a mix of computing, networking and cultural work. The field explores questions of what people communicate online and with whom and how stories, art, history and politics are mixed and remixed in the digital environment.

The popular public talk series is a collaboration between the Faculty of Humanities and the St. Catharines Public Library. All talks are free and open to the public, although advanced registration on the library’s Eventbrite site is encouraged.

Mauro teaches on topics relating to digital culture, natural language processing and app development, and publishes on literature, culture scholarly communication, knowledge mobilization and the history of ideas. His recent book Hacking in the Humanities: Cybersecurity, Speculative Fiction and Navigating a Digital Future uses fiction to encourage people to think about how technology is shaping their lives. He is currently working on a second book, Defend Forward: The Rhetoric of Cyberattacks, that examines recent trends in phishing attacks related to ransomware attacks during the war in Ukraine.

Upcoming Brock Talks events:

• Wednesday, Jan. 25, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. — Cybersecurity and Digital Culture, Associate Professor Aaron Mauro
• Tuesday, Feb. 28, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. — Making Decolonization Visible on the Ground, Professor Lissa Paul, artist Quentin VerCetty and PhD student Hyacinth Campbell
• Tuesday, March 28, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. — Beyond Nature Writing: Literary Journalism and Ecological Crisis, Associate Professor Rob Alexander