Hi, everyone! It’s such an honour to be joining Future Space and helping to lead the centre and its team going forward. I started in the role only a month or so ago, but even in that short space of time I’ve been amazed to hear about what our businesses are up to.
So who am I and where did I come from?
Well, my background is in journalism and marketing, and for the past decade I’ve been an academic, working at the University of Nottingham (where I gained my PhD – the first thing I was truly proud of), Birmingham City University (where I taught for a few years) and Bath Spa University (where I stayed for eight years and led both teaching and research). Over those eight years I progressed from Lecturer to Professor (another thing I’m proud of), teaching and researching all areas of digital media, marketing, new media technologies and business. As well as publishing nine books (I’m determined to get to ten before I call it quits!), at Bath Spa I ran a research centre and really led on all areas of research and industry engagement for a number of years. I’m told that we ranked in my School’s best-ever performance for research quality during that time (another thing I’m very proud of).
But none of that is really why I’m here…
So there was lots and lots to be proud of. But for me, being an academic was never about the research, not really. It was always about innovation – the chance to explore an area in depth, find new ways of thinking, become immersed in the possibilities, and – most importantly – to see that thinking become something useful in the world. I truly believe that innovation cannot happen without research, but equally research should not be done in isolation. Between 2018 and 2020 I was lucky enough to be seconded to the role of Co-Investigator on the Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Partnership, a £6.8 million AHRC Creative Industries Cluster project that (working with UWE as well as the other universities across Bristol and Bath) offered a suite of support to the region’s businesses, creatives, artists and thinkers to experiment with new and emerging technologies. It was here when I truly fell in love with the world of university-partnered R&D and the bringing together of commercial business, academic research, knowledge exchange and fresh student minds.
In fact, I loved it so much that I set up a business based on this model. In 2021 I founded Immersive Promotion Design, set up as a new breed of R&D-led marketing consultancy that supported (primarily) virtual and augmented reality creatives and businesses to better communicate with their audiences about the magic of immersive content. Having first done all kinds of funded research projects where I developed and evaluated new strategies for marketing immersive tech to broader audiences, I then applied what I learnt to paying clients, supporting the likes of Ultraleap, The Victoria Art Gallery, Wiley & Co., Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein and even Bath Spa University with their digital marketing.
And that’s really why I’m here. As I see it, Future Space is an innovation centre like no other: being based in the heart of UWE’s Enterprise Zone is far more than just a nice buzz-phrase for the website – it’s what makes us different, and more than that, opens up entirely new possibilities for innovation, and even how we might approach doing innovation. If I’ve learnt anything at all, it’s that innovation is never a bolt-on: it’s an all-encompassing reimagining of what can be done. And how something can be done. And why it’s being done at all. And that means opening our eyes to alternative (sometimes radical) perspectives to make sure that any shiny new innovation actually functions within the business, and is embodied fully by its people, and is communicated clearly to its customers. What truly excites me about Future Space, then, is that we can help to surround a start-up with the most cutting-edge insights, the highest-spec facilities and some of the best students from all corners of the university. It’s really about facilitating a model of thinking and doing that sits between the hand of industry and the mind of academia – the heart of all good innovation, I believe.
Thanks for having me, and I look forward to seeing you all around the centre.
