Dr Ian Gallagher
Research Fellow
Research and Knowledge Exchange
Dr. Ian Gallagher is a Research Fellow in Creative Technologies and a freelance app and web developer. He has a background in Theoretical Physics and Complex Systems.
Dr Ian Gallagher studied Theoretical Physics at Edinburgh before completing a PhD in Complex Systems at Manchester University. He was heavily involved in the music scene in Manchester, as a sound engineer and gig promoter as well as playing on stage with artists including Daniel Johnson and Neva Dinova.
He helped found a digital agency – OH Digital – before moving to London and becoming an independent app developer and entrepreneur. He has helped to create high-profile apps for Christie’s, Formula One and the Olympics among many others, and co-founded a startup, Myriada, focused on the harnessing of collective intelligence. He has a keen interest in the exploration of consciousness and the emergence of collective thought and behaviour.
More recently he has had great success in bringing digital technology to live performance, online and in the Barbican. His creative technology works have won Arts Council England’s Digital Culture Award (Storytelling) and have been nominated for the UK Theatre Awards (Digital Innovation). More recently his work has been presented at the East Kowloon Cultural Centre, Hong Kong’s flagship Arts-Tech venue and he has become a core contributor to the generative AI open source arts community.