Rate My Professor Gail Kenning

Dr Gail Kenning is Senior Research Fellow at the felt Experience and Empathy Lab (fEEL), Big Anxiety Research Centre (BARC), and The Big Anxiety (TBA) at the University of New South Wales, as well as Research Associate at the Ageing Futures Institute. She holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art, an MA in Fine Art, and a PhD in Art Theory. Her work centres on psychosocial design, arts-based qualitative research, and socially engaged practices that explore lived experience in relation to mental health, trauma, dementia, ageing, and loneliness. Kenning co-founded Skilled Companions Pty Limited and maintains an arts and design practice involving participatory engagement, co-design, and immersive media projects.

She has contributed to numerous collaborative projects, including the development of AI-supported embodied character companions for psychosocial support and immersive works such as World Comes Alive, Perinatal Dreaming, and The Visit. Kenning has co-edited the book HCI and Design in the Context of Dementia (2020) and Compassionate Design: How to Design for Advanced Dementia – A Toolkit for Designers (2018), and she has authored or co-authored over 100 publications including journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers on topics such as reciprocal design, co-creation in dementia care, and arts engagement for wellbeing. She serves as secretary of the Arts Health Network NSW and ACT and maintains affiliations with NeuRA UNSW, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Eindhoven University of Technology, and the University of Technology Sydney.