Future of Arts, Culture & Technology Symposium Speakers

Amamelia is the musical project of Amelia Berry, a musician and songwriter from Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) who is currently based in Naarm (Melbourne). Amamelia's catalogue explores electronica and breakbeat while experimenting with sapphic synthesis.  Amamelia began with humble beginnings with Berry quietly uploading a breakbeat rework of Savage's 2005 single Swing to Bandcamp. Her debut WOW! was shortlisted for the Best Independent Debut award at the 2021 Taite Music Prize and Berry took home the Favourite Solo Act Award later that year at the 2021 Student Radio Network Awards.

Caitlin McGrane is a Research Fellow in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University and a consultant at Digital Rights Watch. Her research explores gender, identity, technology and everyday life. She is particularly interested in how gender-based digital harms are experienced and resisted in quotidian ways.

Her current projects include a project investigating addressing online misogyny through community management and policy change; a project investigating technology in everyday life with older adults; and a project investigating digital-social relations in the museum and gallery sector. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Feminist Approaches to Mobile Media: How everyday insights can inform culture and society.

Christen Cornell is Research Fellow and Manager, Research Partnerships at Creative Australia. In this position, she conducts and facilitates research to support the Australian arts sector and to advocate for the value of arts and culture. Before working at Creative Australia, Christen was a lecturer in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, conducting research in cultural studies, cultural policy, Inter-Asia cultural studies, and urban and housing studies. Christen is also a Chinese speaker, living in China intermittently between 2001-2011 and writing about the contemporary Chinese arts scene in those years.

Claire Evans is an immersive media practitioner and co-founder of Junior Major, a collective of artists and technologists that make and merge digital and physical worlds. The studio is known for a playful yet considered approach, combining strong creative vision with expertise in technology, engineering and materials to realise immersive experiences, artworks and installations.

Claire brings a background in film, digital practice and business, with deep experience leading creative studios and developing laterally minded products and platforms for major cultural institutions. Alongside her studio practice, she is a filmmaker and musician, holds a Master’s degree in Screen Business, and leads a local chapter of Parents for Climate.

Edwina Green is a Trawlwoolway multidisciplinary artist and independent curator. She works across painting, film, design, installation and sculpture to investigate narratives of perception, historical re-framing, cultural reclamation and the post-colonial paradigm and its impact on people and place. Her previous roles include Curator of First Nations Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, and she has exhibited in respected galleries and festivals such as Firstdraft, Pari Ari, SEVENTH Gallery, Collarworks (New York), Yirramboi, Gertrude St Projection Festival, Brunswick Music Festival, and EFFA (Environmental Film Festival). 

Eleanor (Nell) Whitley has a reputation for driving forward ambitious work in a variety of forms – live events, art installations & digital media – her collaborations with Marshmallow Laser Feast (where she is partner and Executive Producer) demonstrate a unique vision for the future of creative experiences. She has produced the critically acclaimed In the Eyes of the Animal (Sundance New Frontier 2016, Wired Award for Innovation in Experience Design) and other mixed reality works including A Colossal Wave (SXSW 2018) Treehugger (Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award 2017 & Best VR Film at Arles Festival) and We Live in an Ocean of Air which premiered at the Saatchi Gallery London (2018-9).

Hugh Davies is an artist, curator, researcher and educator. Working across digital media, academic scholarship, and creative practice, he explores the social, cultural, and political dimensions of art and technology. He is currently an adjunct lecturer and researcher at RMIT and is president of the Chinese Digital Games Research Association (CDiGRA). With sustained research residencies at Tokyo Art and Space (Tokyo) the East China Normal University (Shanghai) and the Hong Kong Design Trust (Hong Kong) his work in deeply influenced by art and games from across the Asia Pacific region.

Dr Jacina Leong 梁玉明 is a strategic leader and collaborative practitioner with 17 years’ experience working across the cultural, education and social impact sectors. She specialises in organisational strategy, community engagement and socially inclusive creative programs. Currently living in Narrm/Melbourne, her work considers how organisations can respond to the converging crises of our time.

Janice Falsone is the Gallery Director at the South East Centre for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Bega, and brings to the role a deep passion for contemporary visual art along with considerable experience in managing galleries and arts organisations. Janice was previously Director at Canberra Contemporary, Kamberri/Canberra’s leading contemporary visual arts organisation (2022-2025), as well as the Director of PhotoAccess and Manager of the Manuka Arts Centre at a time of significant change (2014-2018). She was also Gallery Manager at Australian National Capital Artists (ANCA), and Program Manager at M16 Artspace.

Jason Scott is the Free-Range Archivist and Software Curator at the Internet Archive, an increasingly foundational repository of the Internet and Web's memories. His responsibilities put him in shipping containers, endless digital collections, long phone calls, stage appearances, and social media melees. He is a co-founder of the activist archivist group ARCHIVETEAM and has made multiple documentaries and a handful of short films. He has run the bulletin board system history website TEXTFILES.COM for over 25 years. The last time he visited Australia, he had a heart attack, so you know he really likes the place if he's coming back.

Dr Jen Rae (she/they) is an award-winning artist and researcher of Canadian Scottish-Métis (Indigenous) descent living on unceded Djaara Country (Castlemaine) Australia. She is recognised for her practice and expertise situated at the intersections of art, speculative futures and climate emergency disaster adaptation + resilience – predominantly articulated through transdisciplinary collaborations, multi-platform projects, community alliances and public pedagogies. Most noteworthy was her role as a core artist of Arts House’s prescient REFUGE project (2016-2022) - where artists, emergency service providers and communities worked together to rehearse climate-related emergencies exploring the impact of creativity in disaster preparedness.

Jessica Walthew is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow (Scotland, UK). Her current research investigates how plastics’ lifetimes are understood in the context of today’s discourses of sustainability. She investigates plastics and their “lifetimes” from the perspective of their caretakers in museum collections, employing interviews and case studies from practitioners to draw linkages between conservation and scholarship in environmental ethics, disability studies, and other fields. From 2017–2025 she was a conservator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York, NY, USA) focusing on product design and digital collections.

John O’Shea is Creative Director and Co-CEO of the UK National Videogame Museum (NVM) and BGI Charity, whose mission is to transform lives with games. He heads-up ambitious new collections, exhibitions and learning activity at the museum, and leads on creative vision and research strands. Over the past decade John has directed cultural programming, digital art commissioning and research partnerships for major national galleries and museums. In 2025 he curated “Videogames Transforming Lives” a new interactive exhibition for the UK Pavillion at Osaka World Expo 2025, in partnership with The Department of Business and Trade (UK).

Kate Larsen (she/her) is an arts, cultural and non-profit consultant and writer with more than 25 years’ experience in Australia, Asia and the UK. Currently based on unceded Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung country in Naarm/Melbourne, she has particular expertise in cultural leadership, workplace culture and wellbeing, digital and community-engaged practice.

Lise Leitner is a games creative and writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. They’ve worked in narrative, marketing and communications for more than ten years and have worked for cultural institutions and museums in Australia and in their home country of Belgium. As a writer and translator, they’ve contributed to game titles like Slay the Spire, Trash and MMORPG Tycoon 2, and they’ve written articles, game reviews, and short stories for outlets like Kill Your Darlings, SBS, Overland, and more. Currently, they’re working at VicScreen as the Production Executive (Games and Interactive).

[appearing online]
Malia Simonds has been working in the areas of philanthropy, arts, and public service for over two decades. She currently manages a wide portfolio for Bloomberg's Corporate Philanthropy that includes collaborations with non-profit partners, philanthropic alignment with Bloomberg's business, engagement programs for employees and clients, and corporate giving across the US, Canada and Latin America. She oversees a team that specialises in creating partnerships, funding cultural, educational and entrepreneurial initiatives, and developing meaningful philanthropic opportunities for Bloomberg employees and clients that support local communities.

Megan Lawrence is Head of Digital at the Australian Museum (AM), where she leads design and development of digital products that enable care and understanding of our natural world. Her career foundation as a new media artist producing interactive multimedia through art-science collaborations, including participation in ISEA symposiums, an ARC Linkage project and academic positions at ANU and UTS, developed her creative and critical approaches to digital culture practice. Megan's work spans online audience engagement strategy, accessibility and industry collaborations to create impactful digital experiences, with particular interests in immersive documentary and experimenting with emerging technologies.

Michael Brown is Music Curator at the Alexander Turnbull Library, part of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. His work at the library involves developing, researching, and promoting music collections that span a wide range of formats and eras, with digital production technology being a recent area of focus.

Nicholas Pickard is Executive Director, Public Affairs and Government Relations at APRA AMCOS, Australia and New Zealand's music rights organisation representing 128,000 songwriters, screen composers and music publishers.

Nicholas works at the intersection of policy and advocacy, engaging with government and industry on issues affecting creators. He has established APRA AMCOS as a leading voice on emerging tech regulation, particularly around AI and copyright. In 2024, he commissioned a report on AI and music that generated over 400 media stories internationally and won the 2025 Mumbrella Award for PR Campaign of the Year.

Ra Smith is the Head of Department for Animatronics at Wētā Workshop, where he has worked for the past six years, along with his team, creating complex, character-driven practical effects for film and immersive storytelling.

At Wētā, Ra leads a multidisciplinary team at the intersection of engineering, electronics, performance, and other emerging technologies – helping bridge the gap between imagination and physical reality.

Beyond his work in animatronics, Ra has a long and diverse career across the creative arts. His practice spans illustration, design, and music, with deep roots in dance and live performance.

Robin Fox is an internationally recognised audio-visual artist and composer whose work spans live performance, exhibitions, public art and composition for contemporary dance. His AV laser works, which synchronise sound and visual electricity in hyper-amplified 3D space have been performed in over 70 cities worldwide. His critically acclaimed performance work TRIPTYCH premiered at Unsound Krakow late 2022 and has toured extensively since with highlights including Berlin Atonal, Barbican (London), Ephemera (Warsaw) and the Lincoln Centre New York among many others. TRIPTYCH was awarded the Isao Tomita Special Prize for electronic music at Ars Electronica 2023. He is co-founder and Artistic Director of MESS.

Ruby Justice Thelot is a designer, cyberethnographer and artist based in New York. He is a professor of design and media theory at New York University. He is the founder of the award-winning creative research and design studio 13101401 Inc.

Ryuta Aoki is a Tokyo-based artist and independent curator working at the intersection of art and science. His practice spans artistic production, curatorial work, and artistic research developed in collaboration with research institutions and cultural organizations.  Ryuta’s work centers on the concept of parallel realities, through which he creates critical apparatuses that intervene in invisible structures such as algorithms, institutions, fictional mechanisms, cognitive systems, and ecological processes. By engaging with these hidden infrastructures, his practice seeks to outline possible futures and alternative social imaginaries.

Samuel Cairnduff is a cultural leadership researcher, educator, and commentator whose work bridges academic insight with sector practice. He lectures at the University of Melbourne in Arts and Cultural Management and Media and Communications and is Social Media Editor at Cultural Trends. His first book, Harmonising Cultural Leadership in Professional Orchestras (Routledge, 2025), brings together his doctoral research and two decades of industry experience to rethink how cultural institutions lead, listen, and create public value.

Sarah Teasley is Professor of Design at RMIT University and co-lead of RMIT’s Born Digital Cultural Heritage lab, part of the ARC-supported AusEaaSI, the Australian Emulation Network, preserving and making accessible Australia's born digital cultural heritage. Teasley’s research combines social history and design research approaches to explore how designers, makers and people more widely use emergent materials, technologies and concepts in everyday work. Current projects explore how designers and architects in Australia and Asia-Pacific have integrated digital tools and workflows into their practices, and what this tells us about political economy in the region.

Sewon Chung is the Head of Digital Content and Initiatives in the Curatorial Department at M+, Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture located in Hong Kong. With prior appointments at the Exploratorium and Samsung, Sewon is a digital strategy leader with extensive experience working at the intersection of art and technology at renowned cultural institutions, global brands, and Fortune 500 companies. Sewon holds a Master of Arts from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and a dual B.A. in Literary & Cultural Studies and Sociology from The College of William & Mary.

Sofia Widmann is the founder and CEO of MUSEUM BOOSTER. She oversees operations & company strategy and steers its development. Having an economical background, she gained experiences working in both non-profit and for-profit cultural organisations in the fields of event organisation, marketing and PR. Sofia's focus is in new media technology and its influence on success of museums. From 2014 to 2016, she was studying this correlation as part of her MBA studies at Modul University Vienna. She is a regular speaker at international conferences on the topics of visitor experience, digital strategies, new revenue models and innovation for the museum sector.

Sophie Lieberman is an experienced creative and cultural industries executive, known for her leadership in transformational projects across operational strategy and capital delivery for leading Australian cultural and heritage institutions. She is committed to delivering public benefit from public investment and ensuring equity of participation in arts and culture.

She works at intersection of cultural strategy and transformation, with particular interest in how systems change shape cultural policy, practice, and participation. Sophie is fascinated by the ways emerging global forces and their local impacts are reshaping identities and audiences and how cultural institutions can respond to these shifts and reconfirm their social licence.

Tim Shiel is a prolific musician and artist advocate living on Wurundjeri land. His collaborative and intuitive approach to making music has led him to work with many of Australia’s most creative musicians including Mindy Meng Wang 王萌, Cub Sport, Genesis Owusu and Gotye. He is known to many for his previous roles as a radio tastemaker at Double J, triple j and 3RRR, and for his soundtracks for award-winning Australian video games. He is currently the Community Organiser at music and climate charity Green Music Australia, where he drives grassroots community-building while also leading the global No Music On A Dead Planet campaign in Australia.

Dr Innocent (he/they) is an urban play scholar, artist gamemaker and Director of the future play lab at RMIT University in Naarm Melbourne. The lab develops socially engaged and site responsive urban play connecting experimental game design, public space, posthuman methods, and creative technologies. Working with the city as a material, their approach to reworlding develops posthuman methods that reimagine, reconfigure and reconnect with the world. This involves transdisciplinary practices across design, sculpture, animation, sound, light and installation using methods of multiplatform storytelling that connect objects with their environment to build speculative worlds that playfully defamiliarise and disrupt urban life.

Vince Dziekan, Ph.D is a senior academic and practitioner-researcher at Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA), Monash University, Australia, and an honorary research fellow of the Institute for Digital Culture at the University of Leicester, UK. Vince’s work engages with the transformation of contemporary curatorial practices at the intersection of emerging design practices, creative technology and museum culture.