Judging and Assessment

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.

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.

Dr Inge Ejbye Sørensen is Lecturer in Media Policy at Centre for Cultural Policy Research, University of Glasgow. She advises the House of Lords Communication Committee, the Scottish Parliament, national screen agencies, regulators, and trade unions. She is on the editorial board of the Nordic Journal of Media Studies, a founding editor of the pioneering, peer-reviewed journal of academic video, Audiovisual Thinking and a reviewer for UKRI. Having worked in the television industry for two decades, Inge is an award-winning producer of documentary and fiction with credits from the BBC, Channel4, Channel 5, STV and National Geographic.

Inge’s research interests are the practices, policies and political economy of national and international screen industries with particular focus on Public Service Media, VOD and streaming services; screen agencies, institutions and funding models; and interactive, mixed reality and VR documentary and fact-based media.

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.

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.

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.