One of the most exciting aspects of working in universities is the range of collaborations one can enjoy and the freedom one has to pursue these interests. This cascade of pages gives you a sense of the kinds of projects I've worked on over the years.

Our major installation for the Manchester Science Festival in 2018 was the MicrobiHome, a curated programme of work designed to engage people on microbiology. Working again with media artist Paul Miller, this project drew on the research of various scientists, led by Dr Chloe James. We are very proud to have brought this multimedia, immersive experience into existence it was perhaps our most extensive internal collaboration to date.

Over the last year, I’ve been working on a Wellcome Trust funded project examining the experiences of young people in the world of digital health. In 2019, this project wraps up, after having completed 3 phases of data collection. This work follows a decade of publishing and researching the medicalisation of cyberspace with my long term collaborator, Professor Emma Rich. You can find out more on the project here.

Live  from beijing 2022 (ish)

Most of my content creation is on YouTube, with some additional video over at Instagram. All of it also ends up on “Culture at the Olympics’

Looking back to Tokyo 2020

In February 2018, I was Korea for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games continuing my longitudinal work examining media change at the Olympics. While there, I focused on the integration of new, innovative practices within the media operations, while also considering the interface between official and alternative narratives that operate around the Games. 

In August 2016, I was in Rio for the 2016 Olympic Games. This was my 8th Olympic Games - 9, if you include the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games (which I do) - and each one has been very different. In Rio, I was accredited as media by the International Olympic Committee and this shaped my research. In the past, I've been focusing on the rise of new media populations, but since London 2012, I've been working much more with the media operations team to understand how social media has been utilized by accredited media within their journalism.  While in Rio, I wrote a series of articles for The Conversation, focusing on the rise of social media, how it was used, and the new Olympic Channel.

In August 2015, I attended the press launch for the Games - one year to go anniversary - and a protest which took place the same day. As with any Games, there are competing narratives around Rio 2016, and I'm keen to see how this translates into the media's coverage. 

Over 2016, Manchester will be the European City of Science and my role on the Steering Committee is to work with the Artistic Director Annie Keane and the rest of the team to produce a programme of events that engages the whole of Greater Manchester. It's a fantastic role for me to have, as a relative newcomer in the city, and it's already being a fantastic start. There are such great people and institutions in the region, I think this may be the event that puts this title on the map, making it close to the European Capital of Culture title. 

One big project I have within this programme is called the 'Beacons for Science', which will create a stumble upon science experience for visitors and locals. We want to create an interactive, immersive experience of Manchester as a City of Science, giving people an overview of what it's done, what it's doing, and what it will do, to contribute to world innovation.

Project Daedalus explores the creative potential of drones. Funded by Nesta, Arts Council England, and the Arts & Humanities Research Council within their £7m Digital R&D for the Arts programme, the project brings together arts, technology, and research, to investigate something new in the rapidly moving world of drone innovation. 

Our project aims to provide some key insights that can inform the arts industries. It's a really exciting project and is working with the incredibly talented people at Marshmallow Laser Feast and Abandon Normal Devices. Together, we have built a programme of research and development, taking quadcopters out to new communities and accessing some of the most creative users around. 

Over the last year, I have been working on a project with radioecologists Dr Mike Wood and Prof Nick Berseford to explore life in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The project was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and enabled us to take primary research data from the zone, using camera and bioacoustic monitoring. These elements were then reimagined through a 360 virtual reality installation, which brought people into this remarable space. My role on the project was to drive the creative content, imagining and curating the installation, developing, shooting, and editing film for the installation, but it was an entirely collaborative process.

DIGITAL FOOD LANDSCAPES

Project using digital mapping technology to understand the food journeys of people within the Greater Manchester region.

INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE MOOC ON SPORT & THE MEDIA

In 20014, I led the production of a Massive Open Online Course for the IOC, focused on sports and the media, bringing together some leading voices in the world to talk about how athletes can get into careers in the media, and use the media to boost their profiles.

The GOOGLE GLASS EXPERIMENTS @NANJING2014

One of my roles is working with the International Olympic Committee as its Social Media Mentor for the Young Reporters' programme, which takes 30+ young people to the Youth Olympic Games to learn how to be an Olympic reporter. At each Games, I bring some aspect of media innovation and in Nanjing 2014, it was experiments with Google Glass. Here's an insight into what we did.

INTERNATIONAL AMATEUR ATHLETICS FEDERATION SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING FOR ATHLETES

I will be providing social media guidance for athletes at the Junior World Championships in Oregon this July

MEDIA POLITICS AT THE SOCHI 2014 OLYMPIC GAMES

Funded by the Carnegie Trust for the University of Scotland to examine how journalists at the Olympic Games negotiate political issues and utilize social media within their work.

2013-present: Ética y Politica de los avances biomedicos en mejora humana (Ethics and Poltiics of Biomedical Developments for Human Enhancement, University of Madrid and University of Granada, Spain.

A collaborative project led by Spain including other scholars like Julian Savulescu, Guy Kahane, and Bennett Foddy from  Oxford.

Digital Futures 2050, European Commission.

Part of the DG Digital Agenda, this initiative brings together academics and industry to consider how convergence in scientific and technological systems around digital technology will affect life

Emoto, Future Everything festival.

Emoto was a social media sentiment analysis project focused on content around the London 2012 Olympic Games. Led by Drew Hemment, I formed part of their research team, providing insights that helped shape the project during the Games.

#media2012

An activism project investigating media change, using the Olympics as a vehicle for promoting citizen journalism. Partnerships included the Abandon Normal Devices festival, FACT Liverpool, Cornerhouse Manchester, the London 2012. It won an award from PODIUM, the London 2012 HE Unit and was shortlisted from over 200 projects for a Pierre de Coubertin award.

Human Enhancement, European Parliament.

This project was led by the Rathenau Institute of ETAG on behalf of the European Paraliament’s Science & Technology Options Assessment unit. It was discussed by MEPs and my contribution focused on the reasons for why human enhancement can enrich society if used responsibly.

Abandon Normal Devices festival 

This relationship was born out of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, which brought £3.4m funds to England’s North West. In 2008, I advised the regional creative programmer Debbi Lander via a stakeholder consultation, which led to funding for AND. Subsequently, I contributed to the curatorial community of the festival, advising on exhibitions and chairing the critical salon debates within the festival.

Digital Economy, EPSRC.

Led by Oxford University eResearch Centre, focused on aspects of digital technology and health/arts.

2005-2007

NanoBio-RAISE 

This European horizon-scanning project investigated the ethical implications of nanotechnology. My working group focused on the implications for human enhancement and lifestyle body or mental modifications, reporting in December 2007.

Genetics and Sport, The Hastings Center, New York

This project was funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency and aimed to examine how genetic technology would be used within sports, focusing on the ethical dimensions.

2002-2005

Human Enhancement Technologies and Sport, The Hastings Center, New York

This project focused on a range of human enhancement technologies relevant to sports and considered their ethical issues, funded by the United States Anti-Doping Agency.