Samantha Kitchener
Faculties, deparments and locations
- Kingston School of Art
- Department of Illustration Animation
- School of Design
Acting Course Leader BA Interaction Design and Senior Lecturer (Transmedia Storytelling) MA Illustration
- Email:
- [email protected]
About
I am an artist, researcher, and Senior Lecturer in Transmedia Storytelling for MA Illustration, as well as Acting Course Leader for BA Interaction Design. My teaching and research are grounded in public-facing live projects and the facilitation of practice-based inquiry within culturally and historically significant landscapes. I work closely with stakeholders, arts councils, and local communities to support socially engaged creative practice.
My interests centre on mediating human experience through experimental spatial capture processes. My work explores transmedia storytelling as an emerging practice across heritage, visual communication, and interaction design. I use remote sensing techniques to foster accessible and inclusive relationships with technological tools – embracing indeterminacy over exact digital representation. Virtual rebuilding is positioned as a spatial-critical medium to explore memory, entropy, and the politics of reconstruction.
My practice-based doctoral research investigates the potential of volumetric and experimental spatial capture to support new understandings of visual ethnography, heritage, and community through the technological lens.
Qualifications
- BA Graphic Design — Brighton University
- MA Visual Communication — Royal College of Art
- Fellowship - Advance HE (FHEA)
Domains
I contribute to both undergraduate and postgraduate higher education teaching, focusing on practice-based research, visual methodologies, and collaboration.
My teaching approach to transmedia storytelling is grounded in transdisciplinarity and thinking through making. I encourage students to explore the immersive and interactive potential of technological tools and lenses while questioning their limitations and cultural implications. This is less about technical skill acquisition and more about fostering a transferable mindset – one that reveals hidden narratives and expands how we see and experience the world beyond human capability.
I see unique value in exploring these tools outside their traditional contexts, particularly when engaged with practitioners from non-technical disciplines. My teaching invites students to work with advanced technologies in ways that reflect their lived experience, personal perspective, and individual ways of working – regardless of their prior technical knowledge, fostering innovation through accessibility. I position technology not as something to master but as a mediator for inquiry – one that can challenge and reimagine how we design interactions and spaces within visual communication to locate and prioritise emotion, aura, and biography of diverse cultures and communities.
Qualifications
- Fellowship - Advance HE (FHEA)
Courses taught
My research practice investigates the role of experimental spatial capture and transmedia storytelling in mediating collective memory, heritage loss, and lived experience. I use tools such as photogrammetry, 3D scanning, LiDAR, and virtual reconstruction to explore the politics of place and perception, challenging traditional approaches to heritage digitisation.
My practice-based doctoral research, British Steel: Rebuilding Industrial Heritage Through the Technological Lens, documented the eradication of the Redcar Steelworks in the Northeast, UK between 2020–2022. The project developed spatial-critical methods that combined remote sensing, found-footage reconstruction, and community memory to reimagine demolished industrial landscapes. This included rebuilding the Redcar Blast Furnace core through participatory 3D modelling with former steelworkers, and assembling 100,000+ crowd-sourced image points to reconstruct the experience of heritage eradication felt by the local community in the virtual.
These methods prioritise human connection to place, offering more inclusive and innovative ways of visualising landscape transformation. The work has contributed to national debate around industrial heritage retention, with coverage from major media outlets, including the BBC.
I was recently awarded First Grants funding through Ji8¸£ÀûÍø for a project called Opening Up Archives Through Immersive Narrative Technology. This interdisciplinary project combines machine learning, gamification, and volumetric capture to reconstruct fourteenth-century courtroom environments. The project explores immersive storytelling as a tool to engage public audiences with archival material through speculative, sensorial encounters.
I also supervise PhD research across interaction design and immersive storytelling.
PhD Primary Supervision – Xingchun Mao, Entry year 2024/25 – The Feasibility of Digital Cemeteries: Emotionally Assisted Support for Those Mourning the Loss of a Companion Animal
Specialisms
- Cultural Heritage
- Volumetric Capture
- Interaction Design
- Community Engagement
- Participatory Practice