Nicola Osborne
Professional Services
e: nicola.osborne@ed.ac.uk
Nicola Osborne (they/them) is Manager of the Institute for Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh, a hybrid professional services and research role, including senior roles on large-scale funded research projects. As Manager of the Institute for Design Informatics they work closely with the Institute Directors on strategic planning and lead delivery of administrative and non-academic services. They also provide specialist advice, operational coordination, and support business development as well as evaluation and reporting.
Nicola’s research roles currently include Partnerships and EDI Director and Co-I for the UKRI Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing (NLP) Centre for Doctoral Training; Creative Industries Lead and Co-I for the AHRC-funded BRAID project (phase 2); and EDI lead and Co-I of the AHRC-funded CoSTAR Realtime Lab, supporting R&D in converged media.
Nicola also works on the EU-funded ekip: Cultural and Creative Industries Policy Engine project, exploring development of policies that support creative innovation. They represent the University of Edinburgh on the EIT Culture & Creativity (through Una Europa), which seeks to support creative industries innovation through interventions across Europe.
Nicola managed Creative Informatics (2018-24) supporting creatives to do innovative work with data and contributing an estimated £78.5m GVA impact for Edinburgh and South East Scotland. Nicola also led a connected Creative AI project (2022-4) and co-edited Data Driven Innovation in the Creative Industries (Routledge 2024). They co-authored Creative Informatics Ethics guidance (v1. downloaded 1K+ times), supported and advised 130 SMEs with their own R&D ethics, and are currently an ethics mentor for the CoSTAR Network.
Prior to joining Design Informatics, Nicola provided expertise on social media and emerging technologies (including as co-lead of the University of Edinburgh Digital Footprint MOOC), developed new business opportunities and managed R&D projects, with academic, technical and industry partners at EDINA (2009-18).
Nicola sits on the Turing Institute Humanities & Data Science Interest Group, the Journal of Open Research Software Editorial Advisory Board, is a member of the Association of Internet Researchers. Nicola is a member of the Advisory Board for We Job Box (2025-), an innovative start up facilitating scalable work experience for students of all backgrounds, using AI-powered digital tools. They were also a Non-Executive Director for The Space, a UK CIC supporting arts, culture and heritage organisations to undertake innovative digital work from 2022-25. They sit on a number of funding panels and expert groups, and mentor for several CreaTech SMEs. Nicola is also an experienced speaker and regularly performs with The Provocateurs (formerly the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas) including regular appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe. In summer 2025, Nicola was presented with the University of Edinburgh’s Research Impact Enabler award for their work on Creative Informatics.
