NCACE Research Associate
Alys has been selected as an NCACE Research Associate, part of a pilot programme recognising independent researchers and arts and cultural practitioners.
I’m a cultural applied researcher and independent consultant working where academia meets cultural practice. My work focuses on making collaboration clearer, fairer and easier to navigate for teams and institutions across research, arts and heritage sectors. I look at culture as both a creative space and an underlying system, shaping whose knowledge travels, who receives credit, and what conditions allow meaningful change to take hold.
I create practical, open-access tools, collaborative sense-making methods and composite case-based frameworks that institutions, practitioners and funders can confidently adapt and reuse. One of these tools is System Shuffle, which prototypes new ways to reflect on roles, power and authorship in collaborative environments. The backbone for documenting and sharing this approach is Blueprints for Change, a living case study collection hosted on my website, where research, art and organisational change are treated as connected strands of cultural transformation.
I’m an Associate Researcher in the National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange Pilot at the School of Advanced Study, funded by Research England and working to strengthen knowledge exchange capacity between higher education and cultural organisations. I bring a systems lens, ethical design practice and participatory facilitation approaches that turn complex cultural insight into shared infrastructure others can carry forward.