ABOUT US
Sara Aslam
Sara Aslam is a visual artist and an educator working at Lahore. She earned her BFA (2016) and MA ADS (2020), with distinction from Beaconhouse National University (BNU). She has participated in various notable events, projects and exhibitions. Her creative practice revolves around an expanded notion of home, a space-in-progress and is often explored through an ecological viewpoint while questioning the living condition within an urban environment. She works with diverse mediums such as plantation, earthwork, installation, sculpture, mix-media drawing, and audio-visual works to bring together various possibilities of conceiving an individual and a collective utopia. Aslam is currently teaching as Assistant Professor at Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts & Design, BNU.
Sana Bilgrami
Sana Bilgrami, born in Pakistan, is an award-winning documentary director and Film lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University. Her research interests span the use of archive, 8mm film and personal voice, the interrogation of identity, and the interstices of historical, geographical and fictive spaces in documentary practice. Her broadcast credits include ‘Across the Waters’ (2004), shortlisted for a Satyajit Ray Award, BAFTA-nominated ‘Tree Fellers’ (2004), and ‘New Ten Commandments’ (2008). ‘Fragments of A Love Story’ (2013) was exhibited at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. She works with visual artists to curate international artist residencies and exhibitions: ‘Landscape of Memory’ (2020), ‘Ecologies of Displacement’ (2022). She is currently developing a feature-length documentary film, The Album.
Professor Kerstin Stutterheim
Kerstin Stutterheim is a filmmaker, dramaturg, visual artist and elected member of the German Film Academy. Since 2021, she serves as Professor in Creative Practice at the School of Arts and Creative Industries at Edinburgh Napier University. Before, she was the Rektor (principal) of the Academy of Media Arts (KHM), Professor at Bournemouth University and at Film University Konrad Wolf. As visiting professor, she has been invited to Australia, Brazil, Canada, Bangladesh, China and more. Most relevant publications: Film Dramaturgy: A Practice and a Tool for Researchers. (Chapter 36, open access) in: The Palgrave Handbook of Screenwriting Studies (978-3-031-20768-6 / 2023); Modern Film Dramaturgy – An Introduction. (2019); Teaching Documentary for the 21st Century, 2023; her most recent short film A Summer Sunday Afternoon (2025) is about to be premiered. For more detailed information, please see her Orcid profile 0000-0002-5243-616X.
Noorjehan Bilgrami
Noorjehan Bilgrami, a visual artist, curator, researcher, author of four books and an educationist. She is the Principal Curator, Pakistan Pavilion at Expo 2025, Osaka, Kansai, Japan. She was the curator for the Silver Award winning Pakistan Pavilion at Expo 2020, Dubai. In 2024, she designed the installation ‘Nir Kahani – Indigo Story’ at ‘Manzar: Art and Architecture from Pakistan’ at the National Museum of Qatar.
In 1978, Noorjehan established KOEL and pioneered the revival of hand-block printing, weaving, and natural dyes. Gallery KOEL since 1990 has been a vibrant platform for new and emerging artists. Noorjehan is a Founder member of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS). She was the first Executive Director 1991-1995. In 2017, she was the artist in residence at the Islamic Museum of Art, Design and Culture, Shangrila, Doris Duke Foundation, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Her artwork of the solo exhibition held at the Islamic Gallery, Honolulu Museum of Art, was acquired by the Museum.
In 2023, she was awarded ‘Tamgha-e-Imtiaz’ by the President of Pakistan in recognition of her outstanding services in the field of Arts and Crafts.
Professor Olwen Grace
Professor Olwen Grace is Deputy Director of Science (Collections) at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, where she is responsible for the Preserved Collections comprising the Herbarium, Library and Archive. Her research investigates the evolutionary processes underlying the extraordinary adaptations and ecological success of succulent plants, using the charismatic genus Aloe (Asphodelaceae) as a model system. As a curator, she is interested in the role of digital collections in accelerating specimen identification in natural history collections, providing new data for managing biodiversity, and interdisciplinary study of collections to further our understanding of their value and histories.
David Griggs
David is a Visual Anthropologist, Documentary Film Maker and Interactive Media Specialist. He has been designing websites for over 20 years and helps other creatives manage and build their own online content. He has produced and directed documentaries in Lesotho, RSA, consulted in Web-based productions for Health Online Project and JISC as well as making short documentaries for Learning and Teaching Scotland. He consulted on the web presence with Hopscotch Films for Mark Cousins ‘Story of FIlm’ and has developed the Screen Academy Scotland website which he currently runs. He has lectured on the subject of interactivity and ran courses on Interactive Media, focusing on Virtual Worlds, Alternate Reality Games, Pervasive Gaming and Web 2.0 tools, Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding, and The Internet of Things. He continues his research and interest in Interactive Story mechanisms.