About the Director
 Professor Lizbeth Goodman joined UEL as the new Chair of Creative Technology Innovation in late 2005. She is also Founder & Director of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute & the MAGIC Multimedia & Games Innovation Centre, Gamelab and PLAYroom.
She holds the Microsoft Community Affairs Senior Research Fellowship for her work on a new series of books on Digital Culture and real people: the Emergenc(i)es series with MIT Press.
New labs, development studios and an expanded Practice-based PhD Programme have just been launched in the Knowledge Dock, UEL, in the Thames Gateway, with sister sites in operation in Dublin, New York, Toronto, Atlanta, L.A. and internationally, and with many major collaborative projects ongoing globally, in a range of digital media disciplines across the spectrum of ‘gaming for non-gamers’. . .
Professor Lizbeth Goodman is Founder and Director of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute.  Publication Update (December 2007) >>>>
Professor Goodman directs studies for a group of professional new media artists and technology developers from SME, industry and the creative industry sectors. SMARTlab's customised live and online Practice-based PhD programme is noted as one of the world’s largest and most successful cross-disciplinary cohorts of higher level researchers, grounded in community need and creative industry theory and practice.
SMARTlab is an agency for social change, operating a core research unit and two wings, spanning the nonprofit and creative industries sectors, with partners and funders in major NGO and Industry companies worldwide.
SMARTlab is the UK base for the MAGICbox Accessible tech programme, and for the Microsoft Clubtech Programme, which Professor Goodman has led in its critical review stages (as the largest project providing game and educational technology tools to over 5 million under-privileged young people worldwide). Clubtech for Europe and the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region is in development now, starting from its base in East London.
Lizbeth is also known as a professional performer and presenter, with many years of experience in live and telematic writing, improvisation, performance and direction. She has worked extensively in comedy and theatre and television/convergent media entertainment, and has recently won commissions to create a new style of empowering online and live performance game. As a professional TV presenter for the BBC of many years’ experience, Lizbeth is a much sought after public speaker for keynote lectures and main stage platforms, as well as for broadcasts.
Much of SMARTlab’s work focuses on application of Universal Design methods to the domain of community inclusion and empowerment. As head of the SPIRITLEVEL consortium- a group that has worked across national borders and disciplines to create bio-sensor and live performance experiences for children and adults in need of physical therapy and rehabilitation. One of the first major UK experimental biotech movement projects, premiered at the SMARTclub in 2002, is now known as Flutterfugue, wherein Lizbeth danced with real and animated butterflies (in wheelchairs and in the air) worldwide, to an original responsive score composed by Nick Ryan of BBC Imagineering. This work led to a commission to write and perform a live and telematic motion-tracked show wit 16 disabled young people and professional dancers of mixed physical ability, at the pre-show to the Dublin Special Olympics in 2033: The Felicean Flies was the result (Felichean means ‘butterfly’ in Irish Gaelic).
Major inclsuve technology for wellness Projects are what SMARTlab is best known for in some circles. One major project called HOPE (Hospitals Online for Persistent/Pedeatric Environments) was kick started by medical doctors at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, and commissioned Lizbeth and the team as their creative directors. Linked to this network, the TRUST Project emerged. Trust is a bespoke role play game for children collaborating online, written by Lizbeth with pictorial and storyline input gathered from workshops in special schools and hospitals globally. TRUST has been launched on hospital networks around the world, each linked to a live performance and operated for children who can not move their own bodies, via a bespoke Activechair (haptic controlled interface for physical movement- created by Dr Brian Duffy). TRUST is currently funded by NESTA -the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts- and has previously been funded by the BBC, Inclusive Views, NTU Gamelab, the Carl Sagan Trust, The Children’s Health Fund,The Gulbenkian Trust, et al. The TRUST project creates new games and expressive forms for children at the Stephen Hawking School, East London and at sites around the world.
Lizbeth was previously Director of the SMARTlab Centre at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, and before that, founded and led the INMPR at the University of Surrey, following on from eight years leading the BBC Open University's multimedia research teams in Shakespeare, Drama, Gender Studies and Literature. She has worked extensively for the BBC as a researcher, writer and presenter of Learning and Arts/Media Programmes.
She is a regular reviewer/validator for many independent courses and broadcast programmes and for publishers of print and online packages, and for major funding bodies and award panels internationally. She currently chairs the SciArt Committee Awards Panel for the Wellcome Trust, and serves on the steering groups and funding panels of the EC (SaferInternet Plus and Digicult DGs), et al, and has advised on many international funding panels including most recently the Canadian Innovation Fund, et al.
Lizbeth is the author and editor of some 13 books including a range of titles on women and theatre, the arts, representation and creativity. She has also written and produced a wide range of multimedia programmes ranging from educational CD ROMs and video/media packs to more experimental online performance events, including the Extended Body Project.
She has served as the Principal Investigator of the SMARTshell Project (creating innovative tools for synchronous and asynchronous online/integrated performance and learning), and of the Virtual Interactive Puppetry Project, the British Council's Cultural and Media Studies development programmes in North Africa, and the European Commission's RADICAL project (Research Agendas Developed in Creative Arts Labs). She collaborated on the dramaturgical elements of the EC and Telefilm funded Code Zebra Projec led by Sara Diamond (for which SMARTlab held the European Commission Culture 2002 Award and the Daneil Langlois Award for UK production), working with international partners at the BNMI, BBC, V2, UCLA, et al.
She is currently co-PI of the major InterFACES Project- putting a human face on new technology, including the Eyegazing software experiments led by Dr Mick Donegan and the Assitive Tech team at SMARTlab.
She also holds current major awards to head teams funded by the BBC, Nesta, and Microsoft. The BBC MINDotuch Project on mobile interfaces informed by biofeedback gained from movement and mediation is gaining speed as well, led by Lizbeth with Dr Marc Price of BBC R&D, Camille Baker (PhD researcher) and Dr Susan Kozel.
She is also overseeing creative media developments nationally as Legacy Director of a suite of projects funded by NESTA- the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts,.
While she has been known in the learning and e-learning communities as an expert in mediated and connected learning methods (since her award-winning, best selling books and broadcasts with the Open University and BBC in the 1990s), Lizbeth is now known equally as a scholar of new media practices that cut across learning, gaming, performance and social responsibility. Lizbeth is currently completing her own new book, which will kick off her new series for MIT Press on EMERGENC(i)es: new concepts and practices in media, technology and culture.
She regularly leads 'playshops' (or workshops involving an element of theatre game and costume, role play and movement experiment) for participants ranging from persistently ill children in hospitals, to corporate executives worldwide.
In the Not for Profit Sector:
Lizbeth is founder and President of Safespaces.net using new technology, LTD: an anti-domestic violence and empowerment project operating globally, and registered as a charity in the State of New York.
AWARDS INCLUDE:
She won the Lifetime Achievement Award for Volunteer Service to Women and Children in 2003 (USA) and the 2003 and 2005 World Summit of the Information Society Performance Technology showcase awards.
In 2007 the prestigious Times Higher gave her and the SMARTlab team both a nomination and commendation for service to people with disabilities using innovations in new technology.
She is currently shortlisted in 3 categories - Women Leaders in Media & Creative Technologies, Best Contribution to Academia & the Public Sector and Best Mentor - in the Blackberry Women in Technology Awards competition: results to be announced in May 2008.
www.smartlab.uk.com
www.safespaces.net
www.give-trust.org
www.hopeconnectskids.org
Publication Update (December 2007) >>>>
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