Dr Erinma Ochu

Qualifications:

PhD; BSc; FHEA; PGCERT

Position:

Professor, Collective Futures & Transdisciplinary Practice

Department:

College of Arts, Technology and EnvironmentFaculty of Arts, Creative Industries, and Education (ACE)

Telephone:

+441179656261

Email:

Erinma.Ochu@uwe.ac.uk

Social media:

About me

Erinma Ochu (b. 1972, London) is a storyteller and biologist whose work explores how collective consciousness - the shared beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and values that function as a unifying force within a society or community - as a form of earthmaking.

I am currently Watershed’s Researcher in Residence, where I focus on cultivating mutual learning towards *epistemic justice. As Storytelling Champion on Sustainable Research Computing initiative, NetDRIVE, I have co-organised a 3-day Gathering of the NetDRIVE community at Watershed on November 4-6 2026.

Research Interests

I am currently reinvigorating a hybrid creative writing practice, combining text, performance and personal archives, to examine collective consciousness. I am particularly interested in drawing from moments of productive tension, rupture and departure from normative belief systems, as these moments hold the potential to collectively re-imagine and rehearse multiple different ways of living together.

My work spans — storytelling, biology, and creative technology — and is guided by three core ideas and just practices:

• Self-love: valuing oneself and one's community as foundational to how knowledge is produced and shared.
• Queering metabolism: challenging conventional, fixed ideas about how living systems, including bodies, technologies and societies function.
• *Epistemic justice: I foreground the value of different ways of knowing, such as the value of arts practice, minoritised scholarship and community-based experience as recognised and legitimate forms of knowledge generation.

My Background

Following a PhD in Applied Neuroscience, a 2-year NESTA fellowship allowed me to work at the intersection of art, science and participatory storytelling experimenting with digital media. I subsequently worked in the creative industries as a commissioner, filmmaker, scriptwriter, executive producer and curator. This included 5 years establishing and guest curating DocFest Exchange, Sheffield International Documentary Festival’s public programme and 5 years at B3 Media as an Executive Producer, setting up the B3 digital shorts scheme, Blank Slate, and also working as Creative Director of cultural enterprise, Squirrel Nation which produces moving image works and installations. Previously as Wellcome Engagement Fellow I was in residence at the Museum of Science and Industry, conceptualising digital participation initiatives, such as citizen science game, #HookedonMusic with Dutch scientists, following the success of Turing’s Sunflowers. I progressed through academia as Lecturer at The University of Salford, Digital Society Senior Research Fellow at The University of Reading, Digital Communications Senior Lectuer at MMU, joining UWE Bristol as Associate Professor in Immersive media in 2022. I was promoted to Professor, Collective Futures and transdicisplinary practice in July 2026.

Additional Research Affiliations:

·      Associate Member of UWE's Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environment 

·      Stuart Hall Scholars & Fellows Peer Network

·      Breaking Barriers in STEM network

·      Member, Global majority collective, Liberatory Archives Memory which published 'We, the living archives' a collection of essays that consider just practices that reimagine archives, as living, collective spaces of resistance, solidarity, and liberation.

Esteems

Member, Black Leaders in Higher Education Network

Black Professoriate, UWE Bristol affinity group addressing anti-racism and progression barriers for black staff and students in Higher Education

Royal Academy of Engineering Steering group, Technology Pathways & Meaningful Innovation

Co-editor 'Digital Materialities & Sustainable Futures' book series with Emerald Press. The first book in the series is Platforms & the Planet: Big Tech, Digital Platforms and Environmental Responsibility

Academic consultant on Marcin Gawin's immersive arts funded project, Hermaphrogenesis.

Area of expertise

My research is currently supported by research grants focused on storytelling for systems change and collective action in sustainable research computing (UKRI) and mutual learning (Watershed).

I welcome PhD students committed to centring epistemic justice within their immersive arts and digital media practice and the social worlds/ earths that these technologies bring about or foreclose, as well as considering decomputing approaches, that limit extraction from minoritised people and places, and foreground sustainable ways of living.

Publications

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