DrJulia Scott-Stevenson

Dr Julia Scott-Stevenson is a researcher and maker of interactive and immersive factual media. Her current Chancellor’s Research Fellowship project uses practice-led research to explore how immersive media (virtual, augmented and mixed reality) can address the climate crisis. Using creative practice experiments, Julia is exploring how we might enable audiences to not only imagine tangible and just climate futures, but to enact them. 

Julia directed the collaborative, interactive screen experience 'Collective Visions', which showed in its first iteration in the UTS Data Arena during Climate Action Week Sydney in May 2024. Collective Visions invites audiences to prompt generative AI to collectively design visions of a desirable climate future. An expanding collage was built over five days – a growing collective vision of a rich, diverse and very possible climate future. Julia was creative producer for 'Privy To', an XR project exploring privacy rights, which was one of 14 projects globally to be showcased at CPH:DOX's Inter:Active Exhibition in 2021. 

Julia chairs the International Advisory Board for Immersive Arts – a £6 million, three year, UK-wide scheme that offers an inclusive and accessible programme of research, training, funding opportunities and events for over 200 artists experimenting with immersive materials. Funding for Immersive Arts comes from an ambitious partnership between the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Arts Council of Wales. Julia also sits on the advisory board for Frame Documentary, Australia’s first and only organisation supporting non-fiction artists working with emerging technologies. 

Prior to her current role, Julia spent three years as a research fellow in interactive factual media at UWE Bristol, UK, co-convening the i-Docs research network and Europe’s leading academic conference on emerging documentary forms. In 2019 she was an immersion fellow on the UK’s South West Creative Technology Network, where she developed a manifesto for virtual futures. 

Julia previously worked with Antenna Documentary Film Festival for 6 years developing the festival’s innovation strand. Julia holds a PhD in interactive documentary and social impact, and has taught and mentored in XR/VR/AR, nonfiction media and digital cultures at UTS, UWE Bristol (UK), AFTRS, Macquarie University and institutions such as the BBC.