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Our People
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Adrian Hickey
Associate Head of School of Communication & Media
Adrian Hickey
Associate Head of School of Communication & Media
Life Before Ulster
Adrian Hickey worked as a Graphic Designer for the Alpha Newspaper Group as part of a team that produced ten print publications per week before joining Ulster. At Alpha, Adrian became proficient in industry standard techniques for image production from raw to prepress. This high paced environment enabled him to hone his page layout skills, (in Quark Xpress!) and design multiple advertisements and advertorial assignments for brands such as Lidl, Tesco, Ford, Alfa Romeo and Suzuki.
Adrian first began lecturing in Creative Media Production at the Northern Regional College (Ballymena) where he taught units in Page Layout and Design, 2D Animation and Video Installation amongst others. Soon after, Adrian started life at Ulster as a half-time Teaching Fellow in Media Arts, transitioning to full time in 2011.
Teaching
Adrian’s pedagogical approach can be broadly described as 'Problem-Based Learning' (PBL). Adrian’s Project- Social, www.project-social.co.uk, is a typical example of this approach. At its core, Project-Social is underpinned by the pedagogies of ‘Work Based Learning’ (Kolb, Lucas, Boud, etc.) and contemporary pedagogies of ‘Students as Partners’ (Healey).
Adrian encourages students to produce most of the work independently, using weekly sessions to pitch ideas, critique work in progress, set goals and resolve issues.
These scenarios can be loosely described as problem-based learning. “Problem based learning (PBL) is a pedagogical approach that suggests that learning is effective when the learner is empowered to undertake research into real problems or challenges applying both theory and practice to develop solutions.” (Lucas, 2010) Project- Social delivers an impactful learning experience replicating professional practice, which not only engages the students in subject relevant research activities, but which also has a real and meaningful impact in the communities in which they are situated. For this approach Adrian was the recipient of Excellence in Employability/Placement Support award at the UUSU Learning and Teaching Awards 2018. Project-Social was also shortlisted for an Irish Education Award in 2019.
Research
Adrian’s research is primarily practice driven and centres on using contemporary media practice to engage audiences in creative modes of expression and discovery. Using creative media practices, from augmented reality to animation, my research projects directly engage users through contemporary digital devices.
Much of his creative practice engages users from the wider community, opening up media practice to that audience as a means of communication and expression.
This practice research wants to engage with users that perhaps don’t have easy access to, or perhaps an understanding of, how contemporary media can be used to better society.
An example of this practice-based research is Generation Animation, a creative programme that encourages school children to discover the UNICEF Rights of the Child by animating their stories and Project Social, (www.project-social.co.uk), engaging students in their community by mentoring their media outputs for non-profit organisations.
Civic Roles
Much of Adrian’s teaching and research engages the civic, through either problem based learning approaches or participatory action research scenarios.
He has also designed and developed workshops for Ulster's Schools Outreach STEM extravaganza ‘All SySTEMs Go!’, resulting in high-quality, subject-specific events as part of Ulster’s strategic plan for widening access to higher education.
Adrian is also actively engaged in working with industry through Invest NI's Innovation Voucher scheme, completing consultancy projects in the Tourism, Recruitment, Music and Video on Demand (VOD) industries.
Dr Alan Hook
Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media
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 Helen Jackson
Research Director - Communication, Cultural & Media Studies. School of Communication & Media.
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.

Lee Cadieux
Lecturer - Cinematic Arts
Lee Cadieux
Lecturer - Cinematic Arts
Professor Colm Murphy
Professor of Journalism
Professor Colm Murphy
Professor of Journalism
Life Before Ulster
Dr Colm Murphy worked as business editor for The Sunday Tribune and as a business, news, investigations and data journalism editor with The Sunday Times, London.
He was senior editor in charge of bureau in India, New York, Russia, Israel, Poland and Turkey at international news agency Emerging Markets Data. He taught at Technological University Dublin (formerly DIT) and completed a PhD there in policy making for hi-tech development.
Teaching
Colm teaches in the area of media law and regulation, investigative journalism, hostile environment reporting, conflict reporting, media economics and trauma. These subjects are taught by a combination of theory and then putting it into practice by 'learning by doing'. He has received two national awards for teaching excellence and innovation.
Colm has supervised PhDs in the area of journalism, digital media, censorship and media control, hostile environment reporting. and investigative documentary.
Research
Colm has led major research projects for the EU on developing digital creative industries much which has been put into practice by various state agencies. Other research is on strategy to develop internationally hi-tech digital media clusters and companies.
His book, Policy making for Digital Media Growth, identified for the first time the successfully strategy used to develop Dublin as an international digital technology centre of excellence. Other research is in data journalism and changes in the journalism profession brought on by digital developments.
Civic Roles
Colm is a trustee and director of the National Council for the Training of Journalists, the UK's main industry journalism education accrediting body. He also chairs its international strategy group. He is also a director of the £5m Facebook Community News Project and a trustee of the UK's Journalism Diversity Fund. He was research director of the award nominated £3.6m EU Honeycomb Creative Works project to develop the digital creative sector in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Irish border area.
He was previously a member of the Northern Ireland Creative Skillet board which helped create the world-class film and TV industry in Northern Ireland.
He has made over 10 investigative documentaries for national television.



