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Professor Suzanne Holt Ballard Print bio

Professor Suzanne Holt Ballard

Suzanne Holt Ballard, Ph.D., is the Scientific Director at Participatory Urban Living for Sustainable Environments (PULSE) and a Professor of Culture, Epistemology, and Medicine and Professor of Media Arts and Urban Geography at Ohio University for more than 20 years, starting in 1998.

Suzanne is an interdisciplinary scholar, urbanist, psychologist, social architect, and change advocate with broad experience across the social sciences and humanities. She is the author of numerous books and articles in peer-reviewed journals. Her most recent book explores the global narratives of the future city — cultural stories that are emerging in the context of ubiquitous connectivity, convergent media and real-time data flows. She has taught and researched in the US, Canada and Australia.

Suzanne is the expert consultant to a large number of government inquiries, commissions, and local government authorities dealing with a range of environmental and social issues.

Suzanne initiated and designed the PULSE Project called Future Cities Lab. She developed the consortium and wrote the grant proposal successfully funded by the European Commission.

She is now the CEO of the Future Cities Lab in the UK. Future Cities Lab is a design-oriented environment focused on using digital media platforms, transmedia strategies, and serious games to generate deep insight into the relationship between human factors and smart urban spaces. The Lab emphasizes human-centered design for the future city and collaborates widely with academic, industry, and government partners.

The goals of the Lab are:

  • to develop evidence-based models to drive the re/design of urban environments, applications, and devices;

  • to effect positive behavior change across structural domains (e.g. energy, transport), and inter/intra-personal domains (e.g. health, safety, and security);

  • and to align human actions with the objectives of a sustainability framework.

She is involved, via Future Cities Lab, in the City4Age project, funded by Horizon 2020 (2015–2018).

As Professor at Ohio University, she specializes in teaching Media and Urbanism, Health and Environment, Behavioral Health/Medicine, and Health and Culture. She has been also working on collaborative projects in digital health:

  • Citizen Pulse — a disruptive health IT project focused on linking vertical markets (smart city & smart health) and redefining health and health care via the design and trial of a number of platforms, devices, and applications

  • Connected Life — a project focused on integrating health-related data across different sites and care domains/pathways (including primary/secondary care, and the home) via a combination of biosensors and devices

Between 1992 and 1998, she spent six years at Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia where she was the Professor and Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies at the Faculty of Arts and at the Faculty of Health Studies. She was also the Foundation Chair of Social Sciences at the Center for Humanities and Human Sciences (1994–1998) and of Social Sciences at the Center for Behavioral and Community Studies (1992–1994).

Previously Suzanne was the Senior Lecturer on Social Sciences and Criminology Studies at Charles Sturt University, Australia in 1991 and an Invited Visiting Professor of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, Canada in 1990.

Between 1984 and 1990 she was a Senior Research Fellow at Australian Institute of Criminology, a National Research Fellow of Community Studies at University of Western Sydney, and Senior Research Fellow of Social Work at University of New South Wales.

Suzanne earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Sydney and continues to be interested in the nexus between urban design, technology, and sustainability. She is also a member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Future Government.

Read the abstract from her presentation at Teratec 2016 Forum about Precision Medicine, Big Data and Smart Cities. Read the article from American Psychological Association featuring Suzanne in Design in mind. Suzanne is also a member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Future Government.

Watch Suzanne talk about Future Cities at TEDxLondon and about Psychology, Design, and Cities at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention in Hawaii.

Visit her LinkedIn profile. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.

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