Nicola Osborne

Co-Investigator

CoSTAR Realtime Lab

Speaker Biography

Nicola Osborne (they/them) is Co-I and EDI lead of the AHRC-funded CoSTAR Realtime Lab, supporting R&D in converged media; Co-I and Creative Industries Lead for the AHRC-funded BRAID project; Co-I and Partnerships and EDI Director for the UKRI Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing (NLP) Centre for Doctoral Training; and a researcher on the EU-funded ekip: Cultural and Creative Industries Policy Engine project. They also represent the University of Edinburgh on the EIT Culture & Creativity (through Una Europa), which seeks to support creative industries innovation through interventions across Europe. Nicola is also Manager of the Institute for Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh, which brings design and data together to create a world that is socially just.

From 2018-24 Nicola managed Creative Informatics (funded by AHRC, SFC, DDI, DCMS) supporting creatives to do innovative work with data and contributing an estimated £78.5m GVA impact for Edinburgh and South East Scotland. Nicola led the connected Creative AI project (2022-4) and co-edited Data Driven Innovation in the Creative Industries (Routledge 2024). They co-authored the Creative Informatics Ethics guidance (1k+ downloads, adopted by others inc. Science Museum Group), and supported and advised more than 100 SMEs with their own R&D ethics. Creative Informatics was Highly Commended at the British Data Awards 2024 for Data Transformation of the Year, and Nicola was personally presented the University of Edinburgh’s Research Impact Enabler Award 2025 for their work on Creative Informatics.

Nicola sits on funding panels and expert groups, and mentors several CreaTech SMEs. They also perform shows based on their research with The Provocateurs at the Edinburgh Fringe.

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