Bio
Professor Drew Hemment is Theme Lead for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in Data-Centric Engineering at The Alan Turing Institute, and Professor of Data Arts and Society at the University of Edinburgh.
Hemment is Principal Investigator of The New Real at The Alan Turing Institute and University of Edinburgh, which has advanced a transformative research agenda and a national platform on AI, Arts and Creativity.
As Theme Lead, Hemment investigates how the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences can shape emerging AI, and inform the next generation of transformative, yet human-centric technologies. Hemment conducts research in the emerging field of Experiential AI, which addresses the task of providing end users with richer modes of model understanding and greater agency in co-creative experiments with AI. This area sits at the intersection of Data Science, Explainable AI, Human-Computer Interaction, Critical Design and Creative Arts, and proposes that creative research methods can help the field of Data-Centric Engineering to advance in a societally responsible manner. Central to this is the development of radical interdisciplinary methods to open up technology and data for exploration and discovery, and connect science and data to applications and impacts in the real world.
He is a frequent public speaker and regularly appears in the media, including as expert witness on BBC's Moral Maze, and film critic for Afternoon Show on BBC Radio Scotland. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Leonardo and Alan Turing Institute Steering Group for Arts, Humanities and Heritage. His work has been recognised by 14 international awards including Soil Award 2019 (Winner), STARTS Prize 2018 (Honorary Mention), Lever Prize 2010 (Winner), and Prix Ars Electronica 2008 (Honorary Mention).
Hemment is a Turing Fellow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts.