Helen Jackson

Dr Helen Jackson is Research Director for the Centre of Communication, Media, and Cultural Studies, and Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media in the School of Communication and Media at Ulster University.

Helen's research focuses on how emerging media technologies interact in public cultures of economic activity, and how emerging technological forms, such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications, can help everyday users creatively negotiate, mediate, make sense, or even disrupt experiences of various kinds.

As a multi-award-winning researcher, Helen has received numerous national and international prizes for creative practice research projects that have included immersive interpretive apps for smartphones; AR marketing solutions; websites to generate and network communities; digital toolkits for business; and VR interpretive experiences for the museum sector.

She has published in high impact journals including The Journal of Media Practice (and Education), The Journal of Learning, Media and Technology and The International Journal of Creative Practice, and exhibited her creative projects internationally (Las Vegas, Vienna, Reykjavik, and Dublin).

Helen has secured a significant number of prestigious national and international research awards as Principal Investigator: EU Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme (GLOW €81,000; Digi2Market €1,600,000, TG4NP €2,300,000); AHRC (Dark Arts £10,000) British Academy/Leverhulme (Performing the Drone £10,000), Heritage Lottery Funding (Echoes of the Causeway £56,000) and the Higher Education Academy (Entrepreneur Residency £10,000). As Co-Investigator she has worked across disciples at Ulster University, most notably Museums and Heritage Studies, and Computing through various projects: Museums, Crisis and Covid-19: Vitality and Vulnerabilities, Arts and Humanities Research Council, (£200,000): Capitalising on Digital Innovations for Heritage, EU Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme (€153,000).

Helen has supervised Daire Mulholland’s PhD thesis examining digital media literacy in NI Primary schools (completed in 2014); Patricia Gibson’s PhD project Emerging media, pedagogy and the creative industries (completed in 2022): Claudia Newell’s PhD project Media and Young People in NI and Jennifer Rusek’s PhD project Co-designing and Cultivating Digital Heritage Preservation on Rathlin Island.

Helen’s supervision also supports critical inter-disciplinarity strategies at Ulster, co-supervising with Education on international PGR Arhum Khan’s project examining the role of VR in education (completed in 2024), and currently co-supervising with Applied Social and Policy Sciences on Connor Smyth’s ESRC NINE DTP PhD project using film documentary to explore the power of self-directed support.

With scholarly expertise in media technologies and their deployment in the creative media sector Helen has taught for 18 years on the Interactive Media/ Digital Media Production degree in the School of Communication and Media, a unique multidisciplinary degree that gives students knowledge and skills to work across a wide range of media and technical disciplines in the creative media sector. Helen’s pedagogic priority has been to embed employability and develop graduate attributes that bridge the gap between traditional media practices and their modern technologically facilitated counterparts. Helen’s academic excellence is also found in her learning enhancement projects that support entrepreneurial endeavour and the development of the business attributes required to prepare graduates for successful careers in the creative media sector.

Teaching Awards include:

MEDEA Award for User Generated Educational Media

Distinguished Education Excellence Award for Collaborative Excellence, Ulster University

Best Use of Educational Technology/ICT Initiative of the Year, Irish Education Awards 2018.