Hjorth has two decades experience leading interdisciplinary digital and mobile media projects to explore innovative methods to understand intergenerational connection, intimacy, loss and death. She has lead 20 national and international research projects in locations such as Japan, South Korea, China and Australia. Hjorth has also worked extensively how mobile media is used for grief, loss and recovery including the Fukushima disaster of 2011. Hjorth’s international contribution to the fields of mobile media and mobile art has been recognised through grants, awards, publications, keynotes and professional activities.

Hjorth has successfully led on a dozen grants in both the academy and the arts, totalling $5 million. She has been first CI on three Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery projects; three ARC Linkages (Intel, Fairfax, Grollo, ACMI and AGaMA) and is currently Australian Research Council Future Fellow exploring grief, grieving and mourning rituals in media as a cultural practice (2023-2027).