I use narrative worldbuilding and collaborative methods to help people explore uncertainty, make complex questions tangible and work constructively across different priorities and forms of expertise.
My practice grows out of political geography and research into how stories, technologies, infrastructures and institutions shape what people believe is possible. I design workshops and longer programmes that bring research into conversation with scenarios, creative making and structured discussion. Participants use these methods to examine current assumptions, develop possible worlds and consider what those worlds reveal about choices in the present.
What I Do
Collaborative Worldbuilding
I create processes through which participants can build and explore possible worlds together. These may involve future narratives, scenarios, speculative objects, visual materials or other creative interpretations. Worldbuilding creates enough distance from an immediate problem to help people approach it differently, while keeping the discussion grounded in contemporary political, technological and organisational conditions.
Workshop and programme design
Along with SWRC, I design individual workshops, multi-session programmes, symposiums and public events. Depending on the question and participants, these can combine talks, facilitated discussion, scenarios, creative exercises, collaborative making, exhibitions and reflection.
I develop the structure, framing, presentation materials, prompts and activities around a clear purpose and participant journey. The resulting outputs have included future stories, films, artefacts, exhibitions, publications, research collaborations and new approaches to teaching and research.
Research-led Facilitation
My facilitation is informed by research and adapted to the people in the room. I work with partners to clarify the question being explored, decide who should be involved and develop a format suited to the subject and intended outcomes.
A successful session should create more than a collection of ideas. It should help participants notice assumptions, encounter other perspectives, articulate areas of disagreement and identify questions or possibilities that can be carried forward.
Research-led Facilitation
I am particularly interested in collaboration between people and organisations that do not share the same interests, priorities or understanding of a problem. My work explores how groups can build useful relationships and pursue shared work without requiring substantive political, professional or cultural differences to disappear.
Speculative Worlds Research Collective
I am co-founder and director of the Speculative Worlds Research Collective, a 30-person interdisciplinary network bringing together researchers, artists, educators, facilitators and creative practitioners across six universities.
Since 2022, we have developed a funded programme of workshops, summer labs, symposiums, public conversations, exhibitions and collaborative projects. I lead programme development, funding, partnerships and delivery, working with contributors to turn broad questions into coherent events and tangible outputs.
Speculative Worlds has supported new research relationships, publications, exhibitions and changes in teaching and research practice. Participants frequently return across multiple years, allowing the collective to develop as an ongoing community rather than a series of isolated events.
Selected Projects
Beyond Borders, Beyond Earth: Sociopolitical Imaginaries of Outer Space, 2025–2035
Designed, produced and facilitated a collaborative workshop bringing together experts from across the space sector to develop stories that might emerge by 2035.
I created the workshop framework, presentation materials, prompts and small-group activities. Participants produced future narratives exploring technological development, infrastructure, international cooperation and commercial activity. The session concluded with a facilitated synthesis examining what those possible futures revealed about present assumptions, tensions and choices across the sector.
Making Things Human
Co-designed and delivered a programme for doctoral and early-career researchers exploring how research might retain attention to human relationships, experience and knowledge amid the increasing use of artificial intelligence.
The programme used walk-and-talk exercises, Methods Cafés, collaborative note-making, objects, texts and facilitated discussion. I co-designed and facilitated a session using interview excerpts and collective analysis to examine how research tells stories and how researchers and participants become part of the narratives that emerge.
Reimagining Anthropocene Futures I, II, III
Co-designed and facilitated a series of creative sessions developed with UCL Anthropocene for researchers, artists and community participants. The programme translated environmental research into prompts, collaborative making and discussion about possible relationships between people, technologies and landscapes.
Participants produced short films, artefacts and public discussions that were brought together in a final exhibition. The series also supported a new collaboration between an artist and an AI neuroscience researcher, whose work was developed and exhibited through the programme.
Exploring Sensorial Landscapes and Walking Practice
Co-produced a programme examining walking, sensory experience and landscape as forms of research. It combined invited provocations, worldbuilding, collective making, shared meals and the creation of participant-led walks.
The lab enabled participants to develop new ways of studying place and embodied experience while exploring how collaborative and creative methods could reshape their own research practice.
Collaboration
I welcome opportunities to:
- design and facilitate workshops or workshop series;
- develop scenarios, prompts, and speculative materials;
- convene participants with different priorities or perspectives;
- collaborate on research and public-engagement projects;
- contribute talks, seminars, or facilitated sessions on outer-space politics, sociotechnical futures, uncertainty, and cooperation.
I am especially interested in working with universities, research centres, schools, space organisations, public bodies, and cultural or community partners.
Programme Archive
2026
Making Things Human: A Two-Day Participatory Methods Café
Funded by UCL Social and Historical Sciences (£1,000)
2025
Beyond Borders, Beyond Earth, 2025–2035: Sociopolitical Imaginaries of Outer Space
Speculative Worlds Summer Lab 2025: What Is Speculation?
Funded by the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (£1,400)
Reimagining Anthropocene Futures I: Posthuman Landscapes
Reimagining Anthropocene Futures II: Off-Earth Futures
Reimagining Anthropocene Futures III: Evening Exhibition
Funded by UCL Anthropocene (£1,000)
2024
Speculative Worlds Summer Lab 2024: Exploring Sensorial Landscapes and Walking Practice
Funded by the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (£1,300)
Exploring Walking Practice for Researchers
Café Spéculatif: Conversations Around Film
Funded by the UCL Doctoral School Network Fund (£1,000)
2023
Speculative Worlds Summer Lab 2023: Navigating the Omnishambles
Funded by the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (£1,500)
2022
Speculative Worlds Summer Lab 2022: Interacting with Ideas, Pasts and Futures
Funded by the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (£1,500)