My career has mostly – if not entirely – been unplanned with a non-linear trajectory that has made it possible to work across the fields of art and design, architecture, film and media studies, geography, literature and urban studies at research universities in the UK, the US and The Netherlands.

Far from unusual, non-linear careers are increasingly the norm in our world. If we look to the future, our graduates are going to need the ability – as well as the desire – to reinvent themselves and their careers multiple times over the course of their lives.

Mine has been non-linear because I’ve actively pursued the very special opportunity that academic life offers, which is the freedom to follow interests wherever they take you, even if that means moving across disciplines or living in different places. Each job I’ve had, I’ve taken because of the chance it offered to continue growing creatively, intellectually and, hopefully, as a person.

Diversity and creativity

I’ve always been interested in the conditions that enable creativity, and something I’ve observed over time is that probably the most important condition for creativity is diversity. For creative education to flourish, we need to bring people together from all backgrounds.

One of the reasons why art and design universities like the Royal College of Art (RCA) are such inspiring, energising places is because of the global nature of our community.

Our students come to London from over 80 countries to work together in a collaborative studio environment. This leads to extraordinary innovation and experimentation every single day across all our spaces and programmes. 

Leadership

Over the years, I’ve developed a shorthand for describing what I think good university leaders do: our role is to make great things happen for other people. What makes that job possible – and fun – is that no one does that work alone.  

At the RCA, I have an enormous responsibility to make really great things happen for thousands of other people. Our students do remarkable, unique work, and studying here unlocks bright careers across so many creative professions that we’re constantly blown away by the stories and achievements of our alumni.

Everybody who works at the RCA is part of that success, part of a collective effort to make great things happen for our students. What makes this additionally meaningful for me is that our faculty and staff are united in a shared belief that creativity matters in our world.

Access to education

I work in universities because I believe fundamentally that education, in every field, is valuable to society, enriches lives and transforms futures. My approach to academic leadership, however, has been shaped by seeing just how many obstacles exist to accessing education.

Throughout my career, and always working with other people, I’ve done what I can to remove obstacles to university education. Some of these are structural, others are political, but the biggest is financial.

One of the challenges for creative education is not only to make it affordable, but also to change the perception that art and design are for privileged people. Humans are inherently creative. Art and design are everywhere in our world.

So, we need to open doors and make it possible for anyone interested in art and design to pursue creative paths. We need to do more to help young people believe that a creative future can be for them. We need to fund access to creative education so anyone can participate and bring art and design into people’s lives early on and at every stage of education before university.

Interdisciplinarity

If we go back to when universities were first created, arts and sciences were not separate. They were closely connected, often blended, because both are driven by curiosity. Over time we’ve invented this phenomenon we call disciplines, and we put boundaries between them.

I’m passionate about reconnecting art and design with other disciplines. At the RCA, for example, we have many creative programmes working at the intersections of science, engineering and medicine. This works because we’re trying to solve the same problems, such as improving human health and wellbeing or responding to the climate crisis. We’re going to get a lot further in addressing the big challenges of our time if we collaborate across disciplines.

When I was the director of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), we brought together hundreds of researchers into a collective interdisciplinary experiment where we worked across the arts and humanities to interrogate contemporary culture.

ASCA was the first community I worked in that genuinely practiced interdisciplinary collaboration, and it was exhilarating to experience. I’ve wanted to hang on to that ethos and memory, and I always look for ways to carry it forward in new places.