Professor Lizbeth Goodman – SMARTlab Founder and Director (Ireland, UK and International)
UCD Chair of Creative Technology Innovation, Professor of Education (Design for Inclusion), Executive of the Innovation Academy
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Lizbeth founded SMARTlab twenty years ago and has developed a world-renowned practice-based PhD programme, along with the associated MAGIC Multimedia and Games Innovation Centre and Gamelab. Lizbeth designed MAGIC with industry collaborators as a prime knowledge transfer space in the London Docklands, from which base the team has been developing applications and projects in the social entrepreneurship and volunteering and IT sectors in preparation for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Lizbeth and her teams specialise in developing ground-up technology solutions for people of all levels of cognitive and physical ability, from mainstream learners of all ages to special, gifted and lifelong learners in the developed and developing worlds. In all her work, she applies a universal design method to practice-based innovation to transform lives through the provision of unlimited access to education and tools for creative expression.
Prior to joining UCD, Lizbeth was Director of Research for Futurelab Education, working with David Puttnam’s team to establish innovative platforms for the future of education in a context of global change. She is known as an expert in Digital Inclusion, including learning models for communities at risk. She is an award-winning advocate of community-based ethical learning and teaching models using interactive tools and games to inspire and engage learners of all ages. She specialises in working with people who do not have a public or political voice (whether due to disability, injury, illiteracy, or other social/political factors), enabling the use of new creative technologies for expression vocally, in writing, and with movement and music.
For seven years, Lizbeth worked closely with Microsoft Community Affairs as Senior Researcher on the large-scale Club Tech project in the USA, which has reached 5.4 million of the most disadvantaged children and young people worldwide. This project is now being reconceptualised for roll out in a new format in EMEA regions. She is also Honorary International Research Advisor for RITSEC in Cairo, and has acted as special advisor to the developing Assistive Technology Centre of ITC Qatar in Doha.
In the not-for-profit sector, she is founder and President of the Safespaces.net (SafetyNET): a charity active internationally in the fight to help stop violence against women and children, and of the Trust and Interfaces organisations to make games for children in hospital and persistent care, and for people with severe physical disabilities but unlimited imaginations. She is also an active board member of SpecialEffect: an Oxford-based charity making learning games for young people with special needs.
She sits on many national and international task forces and judging/assessment panels for local and international governments, for the UK Government, the European Commission, the Canadian Innovation Fund, the Welcome Trust, the British Council, the World Summit, Creative Capital, BBC Research, UNESCO. She is also a Leonardo advisor for the Science Gallery.
She won the Lifetime Achievement Award for Volunteer Service to Women and Children in 2003, and has had her technology-performance work for inclusion featured as Best Practice showcase winners at several World Summits since 2003. In 2008, Blackberry Rim and their international industry judging panels awarded her the top prizes for Best Woman in the Academic and Public Sectors, and Outstanding Woman in Technology.
