2024 Keynote speakers and panelists

Dr Jenny Shand

Associate Professor in Health Services and Population Research, Clinical, Education & Health Psychology, UCL; and Non-Executive Director at Care City.

Jenny is Associate Professor in Health Services and Population Research at UCL with an interdisciplinary approach and research expertise in linked data, reducing inequalities and rapid service evaluation. She is part of Kailo, a UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP) funded initiative committed to addressing the root causes of young people’s mental health, in the places they live; a principle investigator in the mental health theme of NIHR Applied Research Collaborative North Thames; Inequalities and Data Lead for the Policy Research Unit for Reproductive Health; a Non-Executive Director at Care City, an innovation centre for regeneration and healthy ageing in East London; Director of the Care City Cohort, a unique ten-year individual-level linked dataset for residents of Barking and Dagenham; and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Jenny has expertise in forging collaborations across patient and community organisations, health and council partners, and the research and innovation system to identify opportunities for collaboration and joint work to transform outcomes in priority areas, alongside reducing inequalities. Her interests include:

• Mobilising community organisations to improve upstream prevention of adolescent mental illness

• Exploring inequalities and inequity in distribution of health need and access to health services

• Curating and using linked data across health and social care for health services research

She holds a PhD in Health Economics and a masters in public health.

James Wallis

Award-winning games designer, author and critic

James Wallis, a pioneering games designer, author, and critic, has made an indelible mark on the gaming industry over three decades. His journey began in the 1980s with Dungeons & Dragons, writing for magazines like White Dwarf, Adventurer and Games International. 

Wallis co-designed Once Upon a Time, a game that was acclaimed for its innovative design, and founded Interactive Fantasy, the first journal to analyse the overlap between games and storytelling.

He founded and ran Hogshead Publishing, the UK’s largest publisher of role playing games in the 1990s, and he established the prestigious Diana Jones Award for "excellence in gaming", underscoring his commitment to industry recognition and innovation.

Throughout his career, Wallis has demonstrated versatility and creativity, crafting engaging narratives across tabletop, digital, and transmedia platforms. Through his game-design consultancy Spaaace, James continues to shape the gaming landscape, focusing on interactive storytelling and collaborative experiences. Spaaace leverages the power of play and playful behaviour to shape our perception of games, encourage problem-solving and foster creativity.

With an impressive roster of clients including Greenpeace, and the Ministry of Defence, his contributions to gaming have been recognized by prestigious publications and media outlets such as the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and Penguin Books, with recent appearances on BBC Radio 4 and Times Radio cementing his status as a thought leader in the field.