Richard Francis (He/him)

Vice President of Marketing and Business Development @ Foleon

At Foleon, we’re privileged to work together with some of the world's most recognizable brands, supporting them in the drive to reach and influence a wide range of target audiences. We've also learnt that their challenges fall into defined categories - join us to see how organizations as diverse as Air France, Disney and Sotheby's tackle them - and how their approaches can help you plan for the future.

Farrukh Iftikhar (He/him)

FVP of Sales, Kontent.ai

Discover how AI is reshaping content creation and search. Learn to leverage AI tools for audience engagement and stay ahead in the evolving digital landscape.

Emanuel Díaz (He/him)

Head of Content Marketing, IE University

Welcome aboard Brat Airlines, your one-stop-shop to change that chip and get inspired to break the stereotypes we see in the higher education universe communications. Now, I know we’re all tired of seeing the same messages out there, and it’s about time we rebel against the status quo. Ready to take off and slay?

Victoria Littler (She/her) & Jonny Harper (He/him)

Vepple / Revolution Viewing

This session will show you how to combine neuroscience and digital storytelling techniques to influence emotions and help students foster a connection with your institution. By humanising your bricks and mortar, and using real students to bring campus stories to life, you can drive awareness of and loyalty to your institution by making your brand memorable.

Tony Sheridan (He/him)

Marketing and Communications Manager at KAUST

Postgraduate marketing can often feel like an afterthought or a poor relative of the efforts we put into undergraduate campaigns. But if there’s anything this year has taught us, it’s the catastrophic impact that a decline in postgraduate numbers - especially from international applicants - can have on the sector. In this session we’ll explore what a truly impactful approach to content marketing looks like when your targets are savvy potential postgraduate students from around the world.

Osaro Otobo (she/her)

Senior Consultant at Halpin and Founder of Make Diversity Count.

Do students and staff feel we are moving in the right direction with anti-racism work? Four years on from the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, you will learn if there has been any substantial change in Education, what barriers Black people face in the Education, and what best practice can be shared to help you (as an individual and organisation) with your anti-racism work and the role that your content strategy has to play in this.

Jason Yip (He/him)

Head of Marketing Web, CRM and Analytics, Newcastle University.

Learn simple strategies, frameworks and develop audience tools to help you break free from repetitive, untested, and manual cycles of communications. Use 1st party data, develop frameworks for internal and student feedback, and identify how to measure success to test your way to more personalised email communication and mastery of CRM.

Kim Donaldson (She/her)

Alumni Relations and Development Office Director, University College Utrecht

In large and complex higher education institutions we often have a wide range of content professionals - with different goals, skills and perspectives - working across the institution. And we often hear “we need to work together more effectively”. In this session colleagues from the University of Liverpool will share how to build an impactful community and governance framework that brings content professionals together.

Sarah Vickers (She/her) & Scott Hood (He/him)

Head of Digital Content & Senior Content Designer, University of Liverpool

In large and complex higher education institutions we often have a wide range of content professionals - with different goals, skills and perspectives - working across the institution. And we often hear “we need to work together more effectively”. In this session colleagues from the University of Liverpool will share how to build an impactful community and governance framework that brings content professionals together.

David Eccles (He/him) & James Moore (He/him)

Founding Partner, Numiko & Head of Digital, University of London

University digital estates suffer from content sprawl. Over time they grow ever more complex, with ad-hoc new pages or separate microsites added to serve different needs across the organisation. This results in a confusing and difficult-to-navigate experience for users, reducing the effectiveness of your content marketing.

In this talk, we’ll share how to put the right frameworks, information architecture and content governance policies in place to create a strong foundation for successful content marketing.

Samuel Harriman (He/him) & Olivia Finch (She/her)

Campaigns Project Manager & Campaigns Producer
University of Oxford

In 2023, Oxford’s Campaigns Team delivered content that achieved almost 20 million social media impressions, just under half a million engagements, over 10.8 million video views and more than 133,000 web page views.

This talk looks at how the team optimised stakeholder engagement to achieve this, from concept stage through to evaluation and lessons learned.

Michelle McMahon (She/her)

Digital Marketing Officer
University of Limerick

How do you align the brand voice of your institution with that of a social platform like TikTok? Join Michelle McMahon from the University of Limerick to explore how to align brand voice, authentic undergraduate voice and the overriding tone of TikTok content using student-led content and authentic peer-to-peer storytelling.

Ayala Gordon (She/her) & Sara Cunha (She/her)

Associate Director for Digital User Experience & Senior User Researcher
University of Southampton

When it comes to the topic of inclusive design, you often learn about the 'why' but no one tells you about the 'how'. Accessibility is a key aspect of inclusive design. But how do you gain access to people with access needs in the first place? How do you build it into daily processes in a consistent and ethical way? This talk will cover some lessons learnt when it comes to setting up accessibility research.

Dan Boaden (He/him)

Digital Content Lead
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Uncover the ethical complexities and practical considerations of filmmaking in lower resource or vulnerable research settings. Drawing from firsthand experience in The Gambia and Uganda, this session delves into the delicate balance between cultural sensitivity, informed consent, and impactful storytelling. Learn from a global filmmaker's journey, from international docs to digital content lead at LSHTM, navigating the challenges of obtaining permissions, building trust with communities, and ensuring authentic representation.

Nat Green (She/they) & Sophie Hawkesford (She/her)

Social Media Monitoring and Support Officer & Digital Content Strategist
The University of Edinburgh

Get curious about your community. A team at The University of Edinburgh are building an engaged social media community by making people-centred, insight-led decisions to tackle brand perceptions and encourage genuine conversations through an explorative project.

Learn how humanising your tone of voice and diversifying your engagement tactics creates impact and optimises your social media content.

Robert Perry (He/him)

Director of Research
Pickle Jar Communications

If we want to provide the ideal experience for our audiences through the content we create for them, we need to understand who they are. And that means going beyond just the demographic data - we have to look at their motivations, what they care about, and what might really make them engage with us. And that’s where personas - good personas - will have the most impact on your content strategy.

Dana Rock (They/them)

Director of Content and Experience Design
Pickle Jar Communications

Making changes to school and department web pages often creates the perfect storm for stakeholder conflict and misalignment between goals and teams. From early ideation to content publishing, find out what it takes to bring your stakeholders with you every step of the way, and why that still may not be enough. In this session you’ll hear tales of woe and success in bringing a large stakeholder group through digital change.

Jonny Vaughan (He/him) & Claire Furnish (She/her)

Head of Content Design for Digital User Experience & Content Designer working in Digital User Experience
University of Southampton

Making changes to school and department web pages often creates the perfect storm for stakeholder conflict and misalignment between goals and teams. From early ideation to content publishing, find out what it takes to bring your stakeholders with you every step of the way, and why that still may not be enough. In this session you’ll hear tales of woe and success in bringing a large stakeholder group through digital change.

Lauren Tormey (She/her)

Senior Content Designer
The University of Edinburgh

As content professionals, the words we write don’t exist in isolation. The way our audiences understand them is influenced by the visual design elements surrounding and containing them. Sometimes, these visual elements can lead to people making incorrect interpretations of our content.

In this talk, you’ll see some examples of visual design affecting users’ perceptions, and learn how to assess the impact of visual design on your content and how to make improvements.

Adrian Imms (He/him)

Head of Digital Content
University of Sussex

Action bias is the tendency to favour action over inaction. It dominates decision-making in many organisations and becomes the bane of many content teams. It favours the constant creation of new information, deluging our audiences and drowning out the important stuff that users need to see, read or do in their lives. So how can we avoid this? How can we persuade others to think before jumping to the creative stage?