Dr Timothy J. Senior asks how traditional responses to a complex world might be opened up to new influences. This means working with different values and methodologies to drive new lines of shared inquiry. From a background in neuroscience, his work has come to span the Arts, Humanities, Sciences, and Open Innovation, resulting in over twenty articles, edited-books, working papers, and reports. He co-founded the innovation agency – supersum – with Tom Rowlands in 2019. Supersum is a vehicle to bring together cross-disciplinary and cross-sector teams around wicked problems, those that speak to different fields of expertise and so resist single, easy solutions. Tim holds an undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, and both a masters and doctorate in neuroscience from Oxford University. (CV 2019)
Tim is research lead for supersum (supersum.works), an innovation agency that designs, supports, and delivers new collaborative responses to wicked problems. Wicked problems speak to different fields of expertise and so resist single, easy solutions. Building on core research and production expertise, we approach other partners to identify wicked problems and develop project bids. Our work currently addresses issues in adult social care, biodiversity loss, and rural innovation.
Tim’s research has spanned many different disciplinary and cross-disciplinary areas, from work on medieval European urbanism, contemporary BioArt practices, dementia friendly communities, through to the neural mechanisms of memory replay. His current focus is on the development of Open Ecosystem Innovation models, work that has brought him into advisory roles for the AHRC, Wellcome Trust, and the Hunterian Museum, amongst others. Tim has devised and taught a range of undergraduate classes at Duke University (US) and Jacobs University (Germany), where he was twice teacher of the year (2011 & 2013).
Tim has organised cross-disciplinary symposia and conference panels on Art and Neuroscience (Duke University, 2009 & 2010), Performativity and Scientific Practice (Hanse Institute for Advanced Study, 2012), Aesthetics in Arts and Science (Seoul National University, 2014, and Historical Empathy and Interactive Technologies (University of the West of England, 2018). He has given over fifteen invited talks and conference presentations in nine different countries.
Tim holds a B.A. in Biological Natural Sciences, from the University of Cambridge (2003), an M.Sc. and D.Phil. in Neuroscience from the University of Oxford (2004, 2008 respectively). He was a Junior Fellow at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study (Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg) in Delmenhorst, Germany 2011-2012.