Creative Cambridge Annual Conference 2023

Rachel is a creative producer, fundraiser and strategist. She co-founded Collusion in 2014 after a sabbatical period spent at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory exploring what she considered to be a latent opportunity for the Cambridge area to become a leader in interdisciplinary art and tech practice.

Collusion creates and produces new public artworks – their own and other artists’ projects, that explore the creative use of technologies and the impact of emerging technology on society. Their activities support artists’ talent development and place-making to deliver dynamic, imaginative new experiences for the public.

Prior to establishing Collusion, Rachel was a Senior Manager for Arts Council England working to support growth in the arts sector and contributing to strategic place-making initiatives with non-arts partners. Rachel has a MA in Arts Management and a BA in European Philosophy & Literature.

Dr Leonardo Impett is a University Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities and convenor of the MPhil in Digital Humanities. Leonardo has a background in information engineering and machine learning, having worked or studied at the Cambridge Machine Learning Lab, the Cambridge Computer Lab’s Rainbow Group, and Microsoft Research Cairo.

A co-founder and member of Animorph Co-op where he distills problem spaces into tangible software and coordinates the development process. His background is in social communication, scriptwriting and software development, with degrees from the University of Warsaw, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Birkbeck, and Queen Mary’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

Nurbanu Asena is an illustrator and animation artist, whose creative expertise spans across editorial, commercial, and independent film projects, and lately, new media. She earned a BFA in Design & Technology from the Parsons School of Design in NY (2009) and an MA in Documentary Filmmaking from The Goldsmiths University of London (2016) as a Chevening Scholar.

Nurbanu’s portfolio has several award-winning short animated films such as ‘Invisible Walls’ (2016), ‘Meeting’ (2020), and ‘One Random Day in Istanbul’ (2010). Her works usually explore themes relating to psychology, sociology, children, and women, as she questions life, nature, the impact of culture on humans, and the effect of our environment.

In 2020, Nurbanu was selected as an AR resident artist for ADOBE Aero, where she spent three months working on her AR projects, and she has since broadened her storytelling approach to encompass interactive media. She is currently a studio artist at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge UK.

Dr Allègre L. Hadida FRSA is Associate Professor of Strategy at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS), a Fellow and Director of Studies at Magdalene College, and a member of the Centre for Film and Screen and the Centre for Heritage Research, University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on strategy in creative, arts and media organizations; improvisation and creativity in business; and temporary organizations.

Allègre has won numerous awards, including the 2011 Best Paper Prize at AIMAC (International Association for Arts and Cultural Management), the 2022 Mallen Award for Published Scholarly Contributions to Motion Picture Industry Studies, three CJBS Faculty Teaching Prizes, four Cambridge MBA Professor of the Year Awards, and the 2018 University of Cambridge Pilkington Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Her scholarly work is published in the Harvard Business Review and in international peer-reviewed journals, including Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes and the Journal of Marketing.

Savannah Willits is the Team Lead of PLP Labs, a design research collaborative operating at the intersection of people, planet, and technology. She collaborates with internationally leading experts to serve the wider studio’s architectural and urban work, as well as external clients with bespoke research; by operating outside the confines of traditional architecture. She earned a MSc in Regional and Urban Planning Studies from The London School of Economics in 2022.

Nicole Bosky is a regenerative culture designer, community builder, and seasoned event producer. In the last decade, she has organised 150+ events on four continents focused on creating and fostering cultures of belonging as a force for implementing meaningful and actionable change for the benefit of society.

Previous projects include a global hackathon, in nine countries with the United Nations that incepted 90 startups around the Global SDGs and Primal Gathering, a B2C and B2B culture design consultancy that regenerates people, organisations and the environment simultaneously in both Portugal and UK that annually plants 1.5-2,000 trees a year. Nicole’s passions lie in re-inventing the future of community, sustainability, and mental health while living a lifelong mission to support a regenerative shift in culture that is resilient, rebalanced, inclusive and co-operative in, with and to nature.

In her role as Senior Arts Development Officer at Cambridge City Council, Akua has worked with representatives from across the creative communities in Cambridge. Akua is motivated by her interest in creative practice and product and its use to engage audiences in meaningful experiences and stories.

Her role is to develop and enhance Cambridge Enterprise’s support for academics, researchers and students in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, with the aim of enabling creative engagements between Cambridge researchers and beneficiaries in business, government and policy, the voluntary and community sector, and wider society.

Prior to joining Cambridge Enterprise, Emma was College Lecturer in Theology at Keble College, Oxford and Lecturer in English at Middlebury College’s Oxford Humanities Programme. She also worked in outreach, public engagement and student recruitment at Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity.

Emma holds a PhD from the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. Her monograph, a study of eighteenth-century religious and literary culture, appeared in 2017. She is Executive Secretary of the British Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Chris has been active in the start-up scene for over 15 years. In 2005 he founded Geomerics during his time as an RSE Enterprise Fellow and moved into the CEO role at the end of his fellowship. Geomerics’ technology has since been used in 100s of games, including FIFA, Star Wars Battlefront and Overwatch. Geomerics was acquired by Arm in 2013, where Chris served as a Research Director and Entrepreneur in Residence.

Chris is a regular mentor to academics looking to develop their technology beyond academia and has helped many of them start out on their journey. In 2019 he took on the role of Entrepreneur in Residence for Physical Sciences at Cambridge Enterprise, responsible for commercialising technology developed in Cambridge University.

He currently acts as an advisor to start-ups, and is currently a Director of Monumo, Fovotec and Healthera. Chris is also a Director of Studies in Physics for Sidney Sussex College and prior to founding Geomerics he held numerous research posts, including an EPSRC Advanced Fellowship. He is the author of many research papers and a book on Geometric Algebra.

Suhair is the founder of open-ended design, a platform and incubator for impact-driven work at the intersection of future-facing technology, design, and culture. In over a decade at Google, based on multiple continents, Suhair led global initiatives which merged cutting edge technology with arts, design and culture, and environmental sustainability.

She is on the advisory boards / trustee for the Design Museum, the British Library, London Design Biennale, the Dezeen Awards, and chair of the board of trustees of dance choreographer, Studio Wayne McGregor. A graduate of Cornell and Harvard University, she is a visiting lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design.

Jeremy Cooke has been employed at Board level in global games businesses for 30 + years, latterly as CEO/Studio Head/International Sales Director. Jeremy’s games industry knowledge is diverse and his contact list extensive. He has set up effective European distribution for Activision, negotiated and secured countless distribution and publishing deals, secured a plethora of grants and raised millions in equity funding for a number of small – mid-size computer game development, publishing and distribution businesses.