Future of Arts, Culture & Technology Symposium Speakers

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.

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 Archive Team 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.

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.

Sewon Chung Barrera 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, Barrera 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. Barrera holds a Master of Arts from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and a dual BA 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 and company strategy and steers its development. Having a background in economics, she gained experience working in both non-profit and for-profit cultural organisations in the fields of event organisation, marketing and PR. Widmann’s special focus is on new media technology and its influence on the 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.

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.

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 & 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 & 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).

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.

Sunghee Cho is a Curator within the Culture and Education Division at the Asia Culture Center (ACC) under the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. She undertakes a range of responsibilities, including planning and executing capacity-building programs and international exchange and cooperation projects with a special focus on education and pioneering the development and implementation of online educational initiatives that leverage the ACC’s rich cultural education content.