Erinma Ochu (b. 1972, London) is a storyteller and biologist whose work explores how collective consciousness takes shape through participatory research and creative technologies as a form of earthmaking. Erinma is Professor in Collective Futures at UWE Bristol and Watershed’s Researcher in Residence, where they focus on queering metabolism and cultivating mutual learning towards epistemic justice. Erinma's past fellowships and residencies span Factory International/Jerwood, NESTA Sci-Art, Wellcome, INIVA/Stuart Hall Library and a Racial Justice AI fellowship with LSE and the Ada Lovelace Institute. Erinma is Storytelling Champion on Sustainable Research Computing initiative, NetDRIVE and co-organised a 3 day Gathering of the NetDRIVE community at Watershed on November 4-6 2026.

Creative practice 

I am currently reinvigorating a hybrid creative writing practice, combining text, performance and personal archives, to examine collective consciousness - the shared beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and values that function as a unifying force within a society or community. I am particularly interested in drawing from moments of productive tension, rupture and departure from normative belief systems, that hold the potential to collectively re-imagine and rehearse multiple different ways of living. I often hold in mind the work of Sylvia Wynter, who wrote an open letter to her colleagues following the brutal police beating of Rodney King. The letter, No Humans Involved, is relevant to this day.

In 2025 my poem, ‘How to read the atmosphere’ was shortlisted for best single poem as part of the Disabled Poets' Prize and published online by the London Writer's Centre. I have recently finished writing a poetry pamphlet of the same name, with editing and mentoring support from Bridget Hart, and am now working on a short novel, Us5 and participatory performance piece ‘I loved her until I didn’t' with artist, Eddie White. Us5 was shortlisted for a London Writers Centre Commission. I am executive producer on a moving image piece, Bat Ecologies, post-produced and edited by Jon Aitkin and acted as academic consultant on Marcin Gawin's Hermaphrogenesis.

My academic publications span posthumanism, AI and art automation, design justice, storytelling, systems change, participatory research, funding equity and neurodegenerative disease. I am co-editor of the book series 'Digital Materialities and Sustainable Futures', an advisory member of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Technology Pathways & Meaningful Innovation steering group, a member of both UWE Bristol's Black Professoriate and the leadership team of the Digital Cultures Research Centre. I am an associate member of UWE Bristol's Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments and a member of UWE's Black Professoriate.

PhD students

Erinma welcomes PhD students committed to centring epistemic justice within their digital/ immersive arts and media practice and the social worlds/ earths that they bring about or foreclose. To support this agenda, working with EarthWatch, Erinma has trained over 75 early career environmental scientists in storytelling techniques to recognise and form solidarity with community-based research and Indigenous knowledge and is now also training computing scientists and data scientists to use galvanise systems change towards sustainable research computing.

PhD students
Tosin Olufon: Preserving African Folktale Heritage through Virtual Reality and Animation: An Immersive Practice-Based Approach to Cultural Preservation. 

Cairi Jacks: Connecting with the more-than-human world through digital art. Read Cairi's paper, Listening to the Land.
Lena Dobrowolska: Co-creating an anti-colonial documentary toolkit for reflecting non-economic loss and damage. Check out Lena's work considering Ways of Repair. 

Amanda Egbe: Black and Forth: Understanding Innovation in Black British Artists' Film and Photographic Work. An Autoethnographic Study of Interventions in Film and Media History Through Practice. Check out Amanda's work here.

Completed PhD students:
Dr Holly Broadhurst: Investigating the Efficiency of Environmental DNA (eDNA) for Detecting Terrestrial and Semi-aquatic Mammals. Check out Holly's landmark review on eDNA for monitoring mammals and citizen science paper on volunteers' motivations to get involved in eDNA mammal monitoring.

Ave Kotze: Older adults' lived experience of ‘virtual nature’ in Virtual Reality. Read Ave's article on The Therapeutic Frame: an illusion of the past?

Iyun S Yemi-ShodimuI: Afrofuturism and Science Fictionality as mode. Listen to Iyun's debut album, Seduction of a Hunter as part of duo, GOMID.

As co-founder and co-director of Squirrel Nation, a small design agency that considers co-existence as an ethic, through installations, live events and moving image. Through Squirrel Nation, for five years, Erinma guest curated Sheffield International Documentary Festival's public programme, DocFest Exchange, generating conversations between artists, activists and community organisers around planetary health. Prior industry roles include acting as director and executive producer of digital agency, B3 Media and freelance roles as scriptwriter, script mentor and filmmaker. Erinma is an alumni of the EAVE producers' programme.

I am grateful for a charitable donation from Dr Simon Chaplin and Watershed which is supporting my research, and to Director of Research, Jo Lansdowne for a generative mutual exchange.