Prof Paul MOORE
Director

Professor Moore joined the University of Ulster in 1999 and has since been active in the development of the creative arts/industries policy in the University. He was head of the School of Creative Arts and Technologies from 2008 to 2017 before serving a short period as head of the School of Communication and Media. He is now Director of Future Screens NI, the AHRC funded creative industries cluster for NI, and is a Co-Director of Ulster’s Creative Industries Institute (CII). He was awarded a personal chair in 2009 becoming Professor of Creative Technologies, and was awarded a Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellowship in 2014.

Prof MichAel Alcorn
Deputy Director

Michael Alcorn is Professor of Music and Dean of Internationalisation at Queen’s University and he is Deputy Director of FutureScreensNI. He established the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s in 2001 and was head of music, film and drama at Queen’s until taking up his Faculty role in 2017. His research interests include work in sound design, multi-channel audio, live electronics and real-time music notation.

PROF Frank Lyons

Professor Frank Lyons is Dean of Research and Impact at Ulster University. He has developed an international profile as a composer and researcher with over 150 performances and exhibitions of his works having been given in China, Japan, Australia, South Africa, the US, Europe, the UK and Ireland and broadcast on BBC, RTE, NPR and ABCFM by some of the world’s leading soloists and ensembles. He has developed an international network of research collaborations in the field of creative technologies and disability under the ‘Inclusive Creativity’ banner.

Prof Glenn Patterson

Glenn Patterson is the author of three works of non-fiction and ten novels, most recently Gull (2016). He is the co-writer (with Colin Carberry) of Good Vibrations (film and stage production) He has written plays for Radio 3 and Radio 4 and with composer Neil Martin wrote Long Story Short: the Belfast Opera in 2016. He is director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s.

Prof Karise Hutchinson

Karise Hutchinson is a Professor of Leadership at Ulster University and Provost of the Coleraine campus.  Professor Hutchinson is the author of “Leadership Development for Small Business: The Power of Storytelling” published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is an affiliate member of the Core Leadership Institute in Harvard and her work in leadership development and education in the SME sector received the British Academy of Management Practice award in 2016. 

Dr Declan Keeney

Dr Declan Keeney is Subject Lead in Broadcast and a co-investigator on the Future Screen NI project. His practice based research focuses on immersive experiences with a particular emphasis on fiction and non-fiction VR, AR & XR storytelling. Declan is an award-winning documentary filmmaker with extensive experience of working on large-scale grant-aided projects. He previously worked at the BBC for 13 years before coming to Queen’s.

Alex Parkin

Alec Parkin is the Course Director of BDes Hons Animation. As a Lecturer in computer animation, Alec is deeply involved in the local animation & games industry within Belfast and is actively helping to grow the sector within Northern Ireland.  As an artist Alec has worked in the creative hubs of London and Belfast on broad range of digital productions such as TV commercials, TV shows, and games for mobiles, console, PC.

Alan Hook

Alan Hook is Associate Head of School, Lecturer in Interactive Media, maker of oddities and experiences for human and nonhuman animals. His research explores how immersive media, games and play can be used to explore complex social, cultural and political issues. He is currently working on a series of projects which explore Speculative Methods for Interspecies Design and approaches to foster Interspecies Empathy.

Dr Franziska Schroeder

Franziska is a Reader in Music and Sonic Arts at Queen’s University Belfast. She has published widely in diverse international journals and has given several invited keynote speeches on the topic of performance and emerging technological platforms. Throughout 2018 Franziska is leading a research team at Queen’s University on a project that investigates immersive technologies in collaboration with disabled musicians and the professional contemporary music ensemble, the Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble (HRSE).

Dr JUSTIN MAGEE

Dr Justin Magee, is the Research Director for the Belfast School of Art and a Senior Lecturer in Product design at Ulster University (since 2006). His research focuses on digital human modelling, user experience and immersion for physical and digital product applications, in Arts, Engineering and Health. As a design consultant he has worked for LEGO Systems, Denmark, GE Plastics (Germany and UK) on contracts with Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, Smart Car etc. As a design consultant on over 75 commercial projects with SME’s in Ireland and the UK such as Randox and IZAK9.

Dr Ali FitzGibbon

Dr Ali FitzGibbon is a lecturer and Subject Lead for Arts Management and Cultural Policy at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research focuses on decision-making and the ethics and ecologies of contemporary cultural production with a particular focus on performing arts and freelancers/artists. Her doctoral research on the artist as stakeholder in UK theatre was shortlisted for the 2020 ENCATC Research Award and she has published research in a range of international journals. She has over 25 years’ experience as a multi-arts producer, programmer, and consultant and policy advisor, latterly focused on supporting individuals, organisations and public policymakers on post-covid cultural strategy. She is a Co-Investigator on the project ‘Freelancers in the Dark: The Economic, Social, and Cultural impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Independent Arts Workers in UK theatre’ (ESRC).

Dr Darryl Charles

Darryl is a senior lecturer in computer science at Ulster University who specialises in machine learning, games and virtual/augmented reality teaching, research and development. His research over the past 25 years has covered topics such as gamification, unsupervised neural networks, computational intelligence in games, cloud gaming, serious games, game-based learning, intelligent interactive digital storytelling, and player profiling and modelling. In recent years his research has mainly focused on health technology contexts, investigating the design of VR and AR games enhanced experiences using natural user interfaces.

Professor Karen Fleming

Karen is Head of the Belfast School of Art, Ulster University, Belfast. As Professor of Textile Arts, she is a practicing artist,  exhibits and curates internationally. Her research and supervision encompass the ecologies of creative industry, design and cross disciplinary collaboration. Her work in Future Screen NI will continue to be focussed on facilitating industry: university collaboration and dialogue through the development of an embedded culture for screen related creative products, content, design and services.

Dr Karen Rafferty

Karen is Head of School for Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen’s University Belfast.  The focus of her research is the application of tools and technologies to lead new disruptive practices and systems.  The main application are Health & Training, Industry & Automation and Inclusion.  She also has over fifteen years’ experience working within the fields of software engineering, sensor fusion and real time software development and over ten years’ experience working within the areas of virtual and augmented reality and multi sensorial systems.

Dr Tom Maguire

Tom Maguire is Head of the School of Arts & Humanities at Ulster University. He is Chair of the Board of Big Telly Theatre Company, Northern Ireland. His research, both critical writing and Practice-as-Research, engages with the relationships between performance, place, identity and power. He has published widely in the fields of British and Irish theatre and also undertaken a number of heritage research projects. These areas of work address the ways in which experience is structured, primarily through narrative forms, that include both live and mediated modes. They have a direct application in the areas of experience design - within the live, augmented and virtual realms.

Dr Eoin Magennis

Dr Eoin Magennis is a Senior Economist (Economic Research) in the Ulster University Economic Policy Centre. Prior to joining the UU Economic Policy Centre Eoin worked for InterTradeIreland and the Centre for Cross Border Studies where he gained more than 15 years managing and delivering research projects with a particular focus on all-island economic development. Eoin's research interests include economic policy research in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, regional and sub-regional economic development, the development and impacts of clusters and sectoral ecosystems, economic history and the history of economic thought.

ProF Philip Hanna

As Director of Education within the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in Queen’s University Belfast, Prof. Hanna is responsible for the development and delivery of degree programmes for an undergraduate and postgraduate population of just over two thousand students. Prof. Hanna graduated from Queen’s University Belfast in 1998 with a PhD in automatic speech recognition. Prof. Hanna’s scholarly interests include the use of technology to aid teaching and assessment, interactive large group teaching and employer engagement.