Judging and Assessment

BETHAN JINKINSON is the Executive editor at BBC Ideas, commissioning and publishing ‘short films for curious minds’ – informal education aimed at under 35s. She works with a range of educational and scientific partners including The Open University, Royal Society and the University of Oxford. BBC Ideas were winners of the Webby award for best science and education video channel in 2020, 2022 and 2023.

DAVID LOWE is a composer and producer working primarily in television, both in the UK and internationally. His music fronts some of the most popular shows on TV today including the themes for BBC News, The One Show, Countryfile, Panorama and Grand Designs. David has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Staffordshire University and Birmingham City University and is a member of BAFTA and the Ivors Academy of Music Creators.

JONATHAN SANDERSON worked in science broadcast from 1994, producing family and engineering series including the classic children’s show How2. In the wider STEM engagement sector his clients have included NESTA, Gatsby, the Wellcome Trust, The Royal Institution and Abu Dhabi Science Festival. He has recently joined Think Physics, an initiative from Northumbria University, Newcastle.

MAEVE O’CONNELL is an award-winning cinematographer whose work includes Drama (features Trick or Treat, And Then I Was French, You (Us) Me, X: Past is Present), Documentary (A Soft Rebellion In Paradise), Music Videos (Bring Me The Horizon, Bullet For My Valentine, Architects) and Commercials (Haribo, Pampers, Unicef). She is a London Film School masters graduate and teaching fellow in
cinematography and filmmaking at Royal Holloway, University of London.

METTE HJORT is Professor of Film and Screen Studies and Head of the School of Film, Media and Journalism at the University of Lincoln, Chair Professor
of Humanities and Dean of Arts at the Hong Kong Baptist University (on leave), Affiliate Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, and Visiting Professor of Cultural Industries at the University of South Wales. Mette holds an Honorary Doctorate in Transnational Cinema Studies from the University of Aalborg and has served on the Board of the Danish Film Institute (appointed by the Danish Ministry of Culture). Mette is co-editor, with Andrew Higson, for the Palgrave European Film and Media Studies series. Her current research focuses on sustainability and green filmmaking, cultures of care in the screen industries, and moving images as they relate to public value in the context of health and well-being. Mette has previously served on the jury of the Zanzibar International Film Festival, has supported the training of African filmmakers at IMAGINE during FESPACO in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and has produced a commissioned report for FilmLab Palestine which was presented to stakeholders during the “Days of Cinema” festival in Ramallah.

PHILIP WARNELL is an artist, filmmaker and academic from London, a first-generation university graduate from a working-class background, in a career that now spans three decades of creative activity, collaboration and knowledge sharing. His academic work has involved professorships, fellowships and tenured roles in the UK, USA and EU: including at Harvard University (Film Study Centre, 2018), Warwick University (Leverhulme Trust Fellowship, 2007) and Kingston University, London. Currently he is an Associate Professor in Film at the University of Lincoln, UK.

He contributes to film exhibitions and screenings, film festivals and academic publications, which recently include installations in major surveys of contemporary art work: at the Wellcome Collection, London, In Plain Sight and Making Nature (2023, 2017), Tate Modern London (2018, 2015), Coreana Museum of Art, Seoul (2022), MOMI New York (2021), Arts Foundation Biennial, Romania (2021), KW Centre Berlin (2015) and the South London Gallery (2012). His film festival awards include for Intimate Distances (2020) and the grand jury prize at FID Marseille (2014) for Ming of Harlem. He has developed and worked as a creative producer on numerous schemes for C4, BBC New Creatives the BFI and ACE, and has a monograph currently in development on a decade of collaborations with esteemed philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy.

REBEKAH TOLLEY-GEORGIOU is an award-winning filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist. As creative producer and co-author of the critically acclaimed documentary We Went to War, she collaborated with the late Michael Grigsby, 'one of the giants of British documentary filmmaking', in revisiting Vietnam War veterans, Grigbsy first filmed in 1970. It garnered international acclaim with special screenings at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, ICA London and BAFTA Cymru.

She also serves as the creative producer for "Okhwan’s Mission Impossible," an award-winning bicycle road movie executive produced by Academy Award-winning director Kevin Macdonald. Rebekah is also a former Executive Producer at Tinopolis, an international TV and distribution group, where she led large-scale projects for the BBC and the United Nations, amongst others.

In addition to her work in industry, Rebekah has a strong background in education, having taught across MA and BA programmes in Art & Design, Contemporary Arts Practice, Experimental Film, Documentary Film, and Global Cinema Narratives. She was previously a tutor in film direction and editing at the Abingdon Film Unit (AFU) and lead moderator for Cinema and Theatre Undergraduate courses at MSA October University for Modern Sciences and Arts, Cairo.

DR RHYS DAVIES is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Sound Design in the Media Arts Department, Royal Holloway College. He started his career working as a sound designer at The Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich, and in 1993 moved to London to work as a Sound Technician at Goldsmiths College. During that time, he worked as a freelance theatre sound designer, and also established himself as a freelance television composer and post-production sound designer, working for the BBC, Sky and Disney. In 2002, he was appointed as a lecturer in Creative Sound Design at Royal Holloway.