About
Kai (she/they) is Professor of Love-Led Leadership with the Arts, Culture, Creativity and Neurodiversity, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Kai's title reflects their mission of co-creating processes of change- and futures-making, solidarity, transformation and hope, as an award-winning artist-academic-advisor-author-agitator. Kai is also MA Arts and Cultural Leadership Programme Leader. Kai joined the University in 2023 as Associate Professor in Arts and Cultural Leadership.
Tentacular and hyperactive, Kai is a:
- trans-disciplinary research innovator - following a National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement Culture Change Award, they became appointed as the first creative researcher on an Editorial Board of the Royal College of Psychiatrists to help make clinical education and training more inclusive and asset-based
- creative practitioner - San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Film Award; Biennale of Sydney; MOMA
- acclaimed curator of programmes ranging £0-£4.8m. A Black History Month festival reached 18.2 million people worldwide; the opening and closing ceremonies of Asia’s Paralympics were praised as ‘game-changing’ by disability groups; a collaborative exhibition with UK and Palestinian community leaders modelled civic care and academic freedom)
- experienced teacher – Principal Fellowship Advance HE, having taught in 200 universities worldwide
- author of Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: An A-Z towards Collective Liberation introduces 26 love-led strategies to reframe ‘leadership’ as a trans- disciplinary, (co-)creative, diversified, decolonised, neuro-queered practice of change- and future-making, and is housed in >15 libraries worldwide including Universities of Cambridge, Gothenburg, Wesleyan; Indian Institute of Technology; Translibrary Helsinki and is transforming curricula like MSc Health Humanities; BA Art History
- founder of multiple inclusive networks with a total of 900 members, around mobilities, neurodiversity, creative research, and more
- sought-after expert – they are a consultant for ministries across arts, culture, digital media, invited juror for Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, and features on Guggenheim Museum, BBC World Service, Guardian, and NHK news.
Find out more
Personal website: http://www.kaisyngtan.com/artful
Instagram: @kaisyngtan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaisyngtan
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/kaisyngtan
Practice-based PhD enquiries welcome
- Leadership - Creative, critical and diverse approaches to ‘leadership’; leadership as change- and futures-making; cultural, inclusive, decolonial framings; arts and humanities thought-leadership; social value of arts and culture
- Justice - Love; social/cultural/environmental justice; liberatory, emancipatory approaches; anti-racist, decolonial futurities; transgender rights
- Neurodiversity - Neuro-futurist approaches; creativity and neurodivergence; creative neurodiversity studies
- Mobilities - Running Studies (running as creative arts and humanities discourse); new mobilities paradigm; mobilities justice; creative mobilities; walking; swimming
- STEAM - Inter-, trans- and ill-disciplinary co-creation, thinking, making, change- and futures-making; arts-psychiatry, arts-health; art-science; liberal and creative arts and humanities; medical/health humanities; AI
- Pedagogies - Critical-creative pedagogies; decolonising Higher Education; undercommons
- Artistic intelligence and making - Creative/artistic practice-led/related-research; curatorial research & practice; digital/locative media; film/video/cinema practice, theory and history; cine-essay; art writing; writing as art
- Social/public/community practice - socially-engaged art; ‘public engagement’; public and patient involvement;