Organising Committee and Speaker Profiles

Plenary Speakers:

Dr Rebecca Emmett

REF Team member and panel D contact

Research England

Speaking on: REF and Disciplinary Challenges.

As a Senior REF Policy and Engagement Advisor, Rebecca works on a range of policy areas, collaborating with stakeholders across the research and innovation sector on the codesign and development of REF 2029 policies. This includes policies relating to the volume measure and contributions to knowledge and understanding.

Prior to joining Research England in 2022, she was Associate Head of School for History and Politics at the University of Plymouth, having spent over a decade working within the higher education sector. Her research specialism is early modern print and digital humanities.

Jenny Evans

Research Environment and Scholarly Communications Lead and PI on PRVoices

University of Westminster

Speaking on: Charting the state of the art and where it could/should go: National frameworks and infrastructure, including Repositories and Open Access for PR.

Jenny is Research Environment and Scholarly Communications Lead at University of Westminster (London, UK) where she is responsible for scholarly communications (repository and university press) infrastructure (people, skills and platforms) within the Library and Archives Service. She was Principal Investigator on the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Practice Research Voices (PR Voices) scoping project, based on previous work she led at Westminster to develop an institutional repository for all research outputs, and which embedded practice research from the beginning. She has led the subsequent documentation of the PR Voices metadata schema and continues to advocate for the use of the practice research lens to enable the recognition of a more diverse range of research outputs and contributors. Her interests include developing infrastructure in co-design with discipline and domain communities, open scholarly infrastructure, advocating for ‘FAIR’ (open where possible) research and open standards that encompass all disciplines and contributors.

Prof Nick Fells

Professor of Sonic Practice

and PRAG-UK Chair

University of Glasgow

Speaking on: Capturing the ephemeral: what do Practice Researchers want and need? New horizons and the future of sharing practice.

Nick Fells is Chair of PRAG-UK and Professor of Sonic Practice in the College of Arts & Humanities at the University of Glasgow. He is a composer and sonic artist, making immersive audio and audiovisual works for live performance exploring technology, spatial perception and intersubjectivity. He has led working groups on practice research for the Royal Musical Association and was formerly Dean of Graduate Studies for Arts at Glasgow and executive co-chair of the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities. He served on the AHRC Peer Review College from 2004-2008, and has reviewed, assessed and examined for a wide range of HEIs and other bodies. He was a founding member of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and founded and co-directs Never Come Ashore, a label and archive for experimental music. He was a member of sub-panel 33 for REF2021.