Helen Kennedy
Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries, Faculty of Arts
Contact
Biography
My career has been characterised by my passion for the integration of research, innovative curriculum development and collaborative and creative partnerships. I began my academic career at the University of Gloucestershire as a Senior Lecturer in Media Communications working in a mixed practice and theory environment. Within the first year I took on the Field Leadership responsibility overseeing staffing, pedagogic strategies and the research development of the practice based staff within the Department. I then moved to the School of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England (UWE) in 2002 and spent the following seven years inaugurating and developing the Play Research Group (PRG) and the Digital Cultures Research Centre (DCRC) as key international nodes in the field of Game Studies through seminars, symposia, conferences and visiting fellowships. During this period I published widely and collaboratively with the other wonderful members of the PRG and DCRC - in the process we established a distinctly British Game Studies approach to the examination of computer games, everyday technologies of play and the wider ludification of culture.
In 2013 I moved to Brighton to take on a Deputy Head role leading and managing a very large school of Art, Design and Media and became Head of the newly formed School of Media in February 2016. I left Brighton in August 2019 to take up the position as Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries here at Nottingham.
My current research brings feminist intervention into games culture and the wider creative industries together with the making and critical study of immersive experience and the responsible use of emerging technologies. In 2023, I founded and now direct the Virtual and Immersive Production (VIP) Studio at the 海角黑料, where I lead a programme of practice-as-research residencies that interrogate virtual production, XR and AI through a curiosity-led methodology grounded in feminist innovation and play. This work builds on a portfolio of internally and externally funded research, including the SSHRC-funded REFIG (Refiguring Innovation in Games) (2015 - 2021) programme, AHRC funded XR Circus (2017 - 2018) , the ERDF-supported LEADD:NG (2020 - 2023) , and the DCMS-funded Create Growth programme (2024 - 2026), each of which has advanced equity of access to creative technologies across games, virtual reality and immersive media. All of these projects have been delivered in collaboration with other academics, creatives and advocacy groups. I have published collaboratively across games, VR and experiential cinema, contributing field-defining work in each. This has included more than a decade of researching experiential cinema as a cultural form that brings together aspects of games & play with film exhibition. Much of this work has been in collaboration with Professor Sarah Atkinson, research that has produced a series of widely cited publications and our monograph Secret Cinema and the Immersive Experience Industry (Manchester University Press, 2022).
Expertise Summary
I am Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries at the 海角黑料, where I direct the Virtual and Immersive Production (VIP) Studio, a practice-led research and innovation facility. My expertise spans the design, production and critical study of immersive and interactive experience, with particular strength in games, VR and extended reality and the ethical use of artificial intelligence in creative practice. I work in a practice-as-research mode that treats the studio as a site of inquiry and holds making and analysis together rather than separating them. Through the VIP Studio I have established a curiosity-led approach to residencies and innovation that places feminist principles of care, inclusion and play at the centre of how new technologies are tested and understood, an approach that has shaped projects such as the I LIVE HERE: VR Hackjam and FAIR Future: Feminist AI Residency and pAIdia an ongoing series of creative and critical AI workshops.
A further area of my expertise concerns the immersive and experiential economy and its place within the creative industries. Over more than a decade I have researched experiential cinema and live immersive performance as expressions of the ludification of contemporary culture, producing a body of field-defining publications with Professor Sarah Atkinson that most recently includes our monograph Secret Cinema and the Immersive Experience Industry (Manchester University Press, 2022). This connects to a sustained interest in cultural evaluation and in the conditions of creative labour, including the inequalities that shape who is able to work and thrive in the sector, evidenced in studies such as Locked Down and Locked Out on mothers working in UK television.
I also bring substantial expertise in knowledge exchange and sector development, together with a strong record in funded innovation. I have secured over five million pounds in external funding since 2018 and led major programmes including the European Regional Development Fund project LEADD:NG and the DCMS-funded Create Growth Nottingham scheme, both of which supported small and medium enterprises to engage with immersive technology. This work depends on brokering consortia and partnering credibly with funders, statutory bodies and industry, and on advising regional and national creative industries policy through roles such as co-Chair of the East Midlands Universities Creative and Cultural Industries Forum
Teaching Summary
I am currently teaching modules at BA and MA level that are concerned with contemporary understandings of the Creative and Cultural Industries. Although these encompass a broad sense of the field I… read more
Research Summary
Currently co-leading an ERDF funded project supporting SME engagement with Immersive Technologies. The project is called Live and Experiential Digital Diversification: Nottingham (LEADD:NG) and more… read more
I am currently teaching modules at BA and MA level that are concerned with contemporary understandings of the Creative and Cultural Industries. Although these encompass a broad sense of the field I bring a particular focus on the innovations within the film and games industries around immersive experience design. I also embed issues of diversity and inclusion in all my module teaching paying particular attention to the intersectional nature of structures of exclusion and oppression.
I have more than 20 years of experience teaching on all aspects of feminist theory, cultural and media studies, game studies, virtual reality, interactive experiences, science communication (particularly in relation to sustainability) and play theory.
Current Research
Currently co-leading an ERDF funded project supporting SME engagement with Immersive Technologies. The project is called Live and Experiential Digital Diversification: Nottingham (LEADD:NG) and more information is available here: /go/leaddng
I have also been researching play design processes through a piece of collaborative practice: The Guild, Collaborative Game funded as part of , with Diane Carr (UCL) and Splash and Ripple a short documentation can be found here:
I am also in the final stages of writing up the outcomes and reports from a 5 year partnership grant funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) entitled Refiguring Innovation in Games. The project engaged academics and industry stakeholders in the UK, Europe, Canada and the US. This project supported the research that underpinned my article: Game Jam as Feminist Methodology: The Affective Labors of Intervention in the Ludic Economy that can be accessed here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1555412018764992
I am also working with Alex Stolz and Professor Sarah Atkinson on understanding the key challenges and priorities for the film industry (particularly as this converges with games technologies) we have published two reports together in 2020 and 2021. They are both accessible via my publication link.
Past Research
I have been researching the intersection of film and game through the phenomena of live, experential and immersive Cinema that has led to a number of publications - see publications for a list of those. There is a wealth of documentation of all the events and collaborations that have underpinned this research on our website http://www.livecinemanetwork.org/
I also worked with collaborator Professor Sarah Atkinson from King's College London to co-write, direct and produce a short film about this research entitled - Live Cinema: Walking the Tightrope Between Stage and Screen (2019) which was nominated for Learning on Screen Best Film Award 2020. We didn't win but we got some great feedback.
I was Principal Investigator, on a funded project within the AHRC, Immersive Experience Call: XR: Circus AH/R010234/1 Jan - Dec 2018 (拢65k). The project was led by a consortium including the University of Brighton and King's College London, Without Walls, Freedom Festival Arts Trust, Sea Change Arts and Lighthouse Arts. We brought together artists and organisations to be part of an intense co-laboratory with scientists and technicians to design and devise new 3-5 minute performances that make use of immersive technology.
To develop the new work we hosted a series of developmental laboratories for participating artists led by leading scientists and technicians including Professor Kelly Snook, former NASA scientist and co-founder of the Mi Mu collective of specialist musicians, artists, scientists and technologists developing cutting-edge wearable technology for the performance and composition of music () and co-inventor of the Mi Mu gloves which have been used by Imogen Heap, Arianna Grande, and Chagall amongst others; Marley Cole, award winning sound designer specialising in spatialised and surround sound design and Jeremiah Ambrose, expert in gaze controlled VR and 360 film and Unity programmer. The artists worked with new immersive technologies including VR (virtual reality) AR (augmented reality), 360 film, spatial audio, haptic technology (controlled by touch or movement), location based technology and live broadcasting technology to devise 5 new performances which were launched at the Brighton Spiegeltent as part of the Brighton Festival in 2018.
I worked for 2 years with Professor Sarah Atkinson and Limina Immersive founder Catherine Allen, to devise a series of activities and interventions to address the challenges facing women working in Virtual Reality. These collaborations culminated in a vision statement, a policy advisory document and several industry event presentations and discussions. We also worked with Immerse UK to run a stakeholder event with key funders and technologists to enlist their commitment to the vision. The vision statement can be found here: http://www.vwvr.org/. My research in to Virtual Reality technologies also led to two academic outputs - one offering a methodological framework for researching VR experiences and the other outlining the innovation ecosystems through which new collaborations were forming to advance the creative potentials of immersive technologies. These are both available via my publications link.