Mariana Ziku studied Sciences, History and Curation of Art in Greece (BA, MA, Dept. of Fine Arts and Art Sciences, University of Ioannina) and Digital Humanities in Belgium (MSc, Dept. of Computer Science, KU Leuven). She is a PhD candidate and research associate at the Intelligent Interaction Research Group, Dept. of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean in Greece and staff member of the M.A. Programme Folk/Popular Culture and Modern Cultural Heritage at the Hellenic Open University. Her dissertation is on the digital documentation of intangible cultural heritage through semantic technologies and digital infrastructures for public participation.

Her research is in computing approaches for arts and culture, with a focus on the domain of intangible cultural heritage. She has been trained in the digital curation of intangible, audiovisual and documentary heritage in Egypt, Belgium, and Germany as grant recipient of the Leonardo da Vinci European Commission programme. She is cofounder of the non-profit organisation Biennale of Western Balkans and a long-term research collaborator at Web2Learn, working as a researcher and project manager in national and European research and cultural projects.