Dr Kai Syng Tan

Kai Syng Tan PhD FRSA PFHEA (she/they) is an award-winning creative arts and humanities academic-artist-agitator, gate-crasher, and sought-after keynote-speaker, mentor and thought leader. Hyper-active and tentacular, Kai (rhymes with ‘sky’) seeks to embody the possibilities of what she describes as ‘artful leadership’ in her actions and approaches, which she is also exploring in teaching (as Associate Professor in Arts and Cultural Leadership and module lead for a new MA at University of Southampton), and research (including via three books as author/co-editor to re-claim and re-imagine ‘leadership' through the prisms of neuro-queering, anti-oppression, futurity and creativity).

Kai is best known for curating, colliding and connecting diverse and divergent bodies and bodies of knowledges/cultures/disciplines, in/between/beyond Higher Education, civic, cultural, creative, technological and non-profit organisations, in/across areas including futures, leadership and innovation, social change, neurodiversity, equity diversity and inclusion (EDI), (mental) health, art-science entanglements, mobilities and borders, tech for good, and more, to catalyse new insights and dialogues and actions for a more equitable and creative future. 

Her 900 innovative interventions across the years (BBC, Biennale of Sydney, Tokyo Designers Week, Frontiers in Psychology, MOMA New York, Royal Geographical Society) are distinct for ‘positive atmosphere’ (Guardian), ‘radical interdisciplinarity’ (geographer Alan Latham) and ‘eclectic style & cheeky attitude’ (Sydney Morning Herald). Awards include: National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement Award for Culture Change, San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award and Young Artist Award from Singapore President. Apart from keynote lectures and masterclasses for European League of Institutes of the Arts’ Teachers Academy (300,000 members in 282 universities) and Oxford University Philosophy-Psychiatry Summer School, Kai has been reviewer for UK Research and Innovation and Arts and Humanities Research Council (since 2015), and was expert advisor for Singapore Infocomm Media Authority (2007-2012), UK Parliament Knowledge Exchange unit, Iceland Research Council and more.

As Visual and Communications Director for the £4.8m Opening and Closing Ceremonies of Paralympics of Southeast Asia, Kai led disabled creatives in large multimedia shows at Singapore Indoor Stadium & Marina Bay Sands, which were described as ‘spectacular’ by the Singapore Prime Minister & ‘game-changing’ by Association of Deaf. Lasting impact include how sign language is now used in the safety videos of the Singapore Airlines. Kai strategised a 4-day festival with 11 partner organisations, the 75th Anniversary of the 5th Pan African Congress Celebrations for Black History Month 2020, reaching 18.2m worldwide. 

Kai has been labelled ‘absolutely instrumental’ (ANTI Festival of Contemporary Art) in reimagining running as creative discourse through her curated RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale & 90-person Running Cultures network. Her PhD thesis explored the poetics of running (downloaded >4225 times), and was awarded by the Slade School as a UCL scholar. She was the first artist-in-residence at the world-leading Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre with art-science commission #MagicCarpet, appearing on an EU-funded film viewed >65,000 times. She is the first artist on British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin Editorial Board, and was the first UK Adult ADHD Network Creative/Cultural Consultant. She founded and co-chairs the Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research Network of >400 neurodivergent innovators, allies & groups including US, Canada, Australia & Asia. 

Kai is an experienced academic developer and leader (PFHEA and National Teaching Award 2023 nomination), Kai has taught in >200 universities (Helsinki, Tama Art University in Tokyo, Silliman in the Philippines, Royal College of Art and Nanyang Technological University) and regularly delivers masterclasses and CPDs (such as for 870 brain and mind experts from 17 countries in Berlin).

Prizes