Research seminars

Professor Camille Baker is an artist-performer/researcher/curator within various art forms: participatory performance and interactive art, mobile media art, tech fashion/soft circuits/DIY electronics, responsive interfaces and environments, and emerging media curating. Baker develops methods and approaches to exploring the body within performance & interactive art contexts, using soft circuits/e-textile, wearable electronics & mobile media. Her book New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance showcases exciting approaches and artists in this space as well as her own work.

She is the Principal Investigator for UCA for the EU funded STARTS Ecosystem (starts.eu) Apr 2019-Nov 2021 and founder initiator for the EU WEAR Sustain project Jan 2017-April 2019 (wearsustain.eu). She has presented artwork and media research at academic, media and art conferences, festivals and events around the world since 2004, details can be found on her new website , and UCA profile. She has now become a Professor in Interactive and Immersive Arts, and has been the Year Leader for the MA Games Design course since 2019, in the School of Film, Media and Performing Arts Farnham, Surrey.

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In her Professorial Inaugural Lecture, 'Expanding Animation and Other Queer Goings On', Professor Birgitta Hosea presented her practice and the ideas that animate it. This includes her work with time-based media and experimental drawing to create durational images, live performances and installations that expand animation out of the screen and into the present moment. Rather than using animation to create short films, her personal work is concerned with deconstructing conventional ideas about animation and digital technology in a post-medium context. Combining moving image, interactive technology, drawing and live performance together, her practice explores animism: the vital spark of movement that brings the still and lifeless into motion.

She is also interested in how the movements we make - our gestures and actions - lead us to construct our identity: in particular, how we perform our gender identity. Birgitta Hosea is an artist, curator and practice-based researcher. Currently Professor of Moving Image and Director of the Animation Research Centre at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, she was previously Head of Animation at the Royal College of Art and prior to that at Central Saint Martins, where she completed a practice-based PhD in animation as a form of performance. Her most recent exhibitions include National Gallery X; Venice & Karachi Biennales; Oaxaca & Chengdu Museums of Contemporary Art; Hanmi Gallery, Seoul. Her work is included in the Tate Britain and Centre d’Arte Contemporain, Paris, archives. She has been awarded an Adobe Impact Award, a MAMA Award for Holographic Arts and an honorary fellowship of the Royal Society of the Arts.

Having written a number of publications on drawing, performance and experimental animation, her most recent is Performance Drawing: New Practices Since 1945 (Bloomsbury, 2020) co-written with Maryclare Foá, Jane Grisewood and Carali McCall. With experience in education from PhD supervision through to corporate software training, Birgitta has taught in many leading institutions around the world including Azerbaijan, Austria, China, Romania, Sweden and the USA, including initiating and project managing public engagement projects with the National Gallery, ENO, London Transport Museum, RSC and the Wellcome Digital Collection. Other curation experience includes Performing Identity: Inside the Outsider, an exhibition of animated installation at PNCA, Portland, Oregon and events for Ars Electronica, Linz and Adobe, London.

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Professor Bhabani Shankar Nayak hosted his inaugural lecture as Professor of Business Management, Programme Director, Business Management and Marketing, where he will talk about ‘Fraternal capital and anti social business’ Bhabani is a political economist. Before moving to UCA, he worked in the universities in Sussex, Glasgow, Manchester, York and Coventry. His research interests consist of four closely interrelated and mutually guiding programmes i.e. i) political economy, business management, sustainable development, gender and environment in South Asia, ii) market, microfinance, religion, ethics, and social business, iii) faith, freedom, globalisation and governance and iv) Hindu religion and capitalism.

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