People within the Museums, Crisis, Covid-19 Project

Professor Elizabeth Crooke

Professor of Museum and Heritage Studies

Professor Elizabeth Crooke is Principal Investigator of UK Research and Innovation funded-project Museums, Crisis and Covid-19: Vitality and Vulnerabilities (Dec 2020-May 2022), which is investigating how the museum sector will emerge and refocus in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis.

The project is in collaboration with the Museums Association, NI Museums Council, National Lottery Heritage Fund, and regional museums in Northern Ireland.

This new UKRI project builds on her position as a leading academic in museum and heritage studies and her close connection with the museum sector.

Her co-edited collection Heritage after Conflict: Northern Ireland (Routledge 2018) brought together scholars with varying perspectives on the heritage landscape in Northern Ireland post-1998.

Her peer reviewed journal articles can be found in Memory Studies; Cultural Geographies; International Journal of Heritage Studies; Irish Political Studies; Liminalities: Journal of Performance Studies; and Journal of the History of Collections.

In collaboration with the Irish Museums Association, she is co-supervising a Northern Bridge AHRC-funded Doctoral Research Project investigating the character and legacy of EU funding in the museum sector in Northern Ireland and border counties.

Elizabeth has been invited to speak at museum and academic events by the Association of Critical Heritage Studies UK, Arts and Humanities Research Council, University of Toronto, V&A, Trinity College Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, National Museum of Ireland, University of Stockholm, and University of Antwerp. She has examined PhDs at Universities of Cambridge, Cardiff, Leeds, Limerick, Newcastle and Northumbria.

She has made a significant contribution to the Northern Ireland museum sector as Chair Board Directors, NI Museums Council (Sept 2015-Jan 2021) and as a current Board member.

She is part of the Museum Standards Programme Advisory Committee, Heritage Council (Ireland) and has served on the Board of Directors Irish Museums Association. She was CI on the AHRC-funded First World War Engagement Centre Living Legacies (2014-2019).

Dr Alan Hook

Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media

Alan Hook is a Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media, Associate Head of School for the School of Communication and Media, and a Researcher in New Media and Play in the University’s Centre of Media Research. He is a maker of experiences and oddities for Human and Non-Human Animals.

He has worked with games, immersive media and virtual environments development as a way to investigate and interrogate ideas of play, politics and identity for over 15 years displaying work in exhibitions such as Paraflows (Vienna), international festivals such as Zero1 in San Jose and RXIC in Riga.

He has exhibited virtual environments research in The Tech Museum, Americas largest Science and Technology Museum and continues to work with virtual environments and immersive game experiences as a way to build understanding of complex social, cultural and political issues. Alan’s current research looks at games as a way to tackle ‘wicked problems’ such as Climate Change or Civic and Societal Responsibility.

He has published a large body of work over the past 10 years which explores transmedia narratives, alternate reality games, and playful encounters with blended reality Fiction. He has written on ‘This is Not A Game’ (TINAG) as an aesthetic, Making a Murderer as a Transmedia Experience, Social Justice Storytelling, Indie ARGs, Networked Narratives, and produced a wide range of practice outcomes in the form of ARGs and ARG-like experiences.

Alan is Co-Investigator on the £13m FutureScreens NI AHRC Creative Cluster which explores emerging technology, the creative industries and economic growth (PI Prof Paul Moore). The grant delivers expert technical skills, opportunity and growth across film and broadcast, animation, games and immersive technologies and industries in Northern Ireland.

Through the partnership, Northern Ireland's creative companies will develop strategies to collaborative, grow productivity and maximise their global potential, delivering new jobs and a £400 million increase in GVA to boost the local economy.

He is Co-Investigator on the €2m Northern Periphery and Arctic Program (PI Dr Helen Jackson) Digi2Market. The project aims to address challenges that companies in peripheral areas may face, such as small size of market, distance from the market and isolation. The project explores how immersive technologies can help SMEs access new markets and support economic growth.

Alan is Co-Investigator on the UK Research and Innovation funded-project Museums, Crisis and Covid-19: Vitality and Vulnerabilities (PI Prof Elizabeth Crooke), which is investigating how the museum sector will emerge and refocus in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis.

Outside his funded research Alan is working on a series of projects which explore speculative methods to increase inter-species empathy and understanding such as Equine Eyes, a headset that helps you ‘see like a horse’ and toolkits to help promote interspecies thinking as a form of speculative methodology.

Dr Breda Friel

Senior Lecturer

Dr. Breda Friel is Course Director for the Postgraduate, Master’s programme, and Continuous Professional Development Short Courses (Level M) in Community Youth Work at Ulster University Magee campus.

She is also the director of The Centre for Youth Research and Dialogue (CYRD).  Her research area is focussed on suicide prevention, Autism Spectrum Conditions, and the importance of relationship in practice.  Her current research is studying Museums, Crisis and Covid-19.

Specialising in trauma debriefing and critical incident responses, Breda is an accredited therapist and clinical supervisor with the Irish Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP) and the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy.

She works with statutory and voluntary agencies in managing resources and support following critical events and current research is focusing on the unfolding narrative and practice themes emerging from Covid-19 and its impact on individuals and communities.

Breda is a founding member of several mental health initiatives, including

• Insight Inishowen
• Jigsaw Donegal
• the Social Prescribing Programme
• the award-winning Feel-Good Fortnight community resilience programme in Inishowen

She is the author of The Irish Association of Suicidology: A History (2020).

Dr Helen Jackson

Research Director - Communication, Cultural & Media Studies. School of Communication & Media.

Helen's research focuses on how emerging media technologies interact in public cultures of economic activity, and how emerging technological forms, such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications, can help everyday users creatively negotiate, mediate, make sense, or even disrupt experiences of various kinds.

As a multi-award-winning researcher, Helen has received numerous national and international prizes for creative practice research projects that have included immersive interpretive apps for smartphones; AR marketing solutions; websites to generate and network communities; digital toolkits for business; and AR and VR interpretive experiences for the heritage and museum sectors.

Teaching

With scholarly expertise in media technologies and their deployment in the creative media sector Helen has taught for 18 years on the Interactive Media/ Digital Media Production degree in the School of Communication and Media, a unique multidisciplinary degree that gives students knowledge and skills to work across a wide range of media and technical disciplines in the creative media sector.

Helen’s pedagogic priority has been to embed employability and develop graduate attributes that bridge the gap between traditional media practices and their modern technologically facilitated counterparts.

Helen’s academic excellence is also found in her learning enhancement projects that support entrepreneurial endeavour, and the development of the business attributes required to prepare graduates for successful careers in the creative media sector.

Professor Tom Maguire

Head of School of Arts & Humanities

Tom Maguire is Professor of Contemporary Drama and Performance and Head of the School of Arts and Humanities. He teaches, researches and supervises doctoral projects in Drama and Museum & Heritage Studies.

He is a Co-Investigator on two major projects currently. The first is Future Screens NI which delivers expert technical skills, opportunity and growth across film and broadcast, animation, games and immersive technologies and industries in Northern Ireland.

The second is Museums, Crisis and Covid-19: Vitality and Vulnerabilities, which is investigating how the museum sector will emerge and refocus in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis.

Tom co-edited with Professor Elizabeth Crooke the collection Heritage after Conflict: Northern Ireland (Routledge 2018) that brought together scholars with varying perspectives on the heritage landscape in Northern Ireland post-1998.
His peer reviewed journal articles can be found, for example, in the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English; the Journal of Hate Studies; The International Journal of Scottish Theatre and Screen; and Strenae.

Tom has been invited to speak at Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh; University College Dublin; Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

He is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow of Ulster University and a Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy. He was awarded Honorary Life Membership of the Standing Conference of University Drama Departments.

Tom is the elected Chair of the Board of the International Theatre for Young Audiences Research Network and a member of the AHRC’s Peer Review College. He chairs the Board of Big Telly Theatre Company and is a Board Member of Young at Art, Belfast.

Professor Philip McDermott

Professor of Sociology

Philip McDermott is Professor of Sociology with teaching interests in Irish society, cultural and media studies, and social research methods.

He is Course Director for Sociology subject combinations on the Derry-Londonderry Campus. Professor McDermott previously taught on the undergraduate Sociology programme on the Belfast Campus and contributed to the ‘Patients, Populations and Society’ strand of the Graduate Entry Medical School.

His research explores the relationship between the state and the heritage of minority groups, with a particular focus on migrant and linguistic minorities. He is especially interested in how social and cultural heritage policies intersect to create spaces for empowerment. A further strand of his work examines language and identity in public settings, including the visibility and perception of migrant languages in civic life.

Professor McDermott has published over 55 academic outputs, including a monograph, edited collections, and articles in high-impact international journals. He has delivered keynote presentations at institutions such as UCL, Cambridge, and Humak University (Helsinki).

He served as editor of the Irish Journal of Sociology (2020–2023) and is currently an editor of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures. His research has been supported by the British Academy, the National Trust, and the AHRC, and he was awarded a Charlemont Scholarship by the Royal Irish Academy (2015–16).

Philip’s international standing is reflected in his roles as an independent expert for the European Commission (Horizon), the National Research Council of Poland, and the Velux Foundation in Denmark. In 2022, he received Ulster University’s Distinguished Research Fellowship for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and he holds a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

His work is strongly impact-oriented. In 2024, he co-organised an AHRC-funded symposium on Heritage Activism and Difficult Pasts with Professor Patricia Lundy. He also works closely with NGOs supporting migrant communities in Northern Ireland and was recognised with a Breaking Barriers award at the 2021 NI Advancing Racial Equality Awards.