SPEAKERS

Consultant - Lead for Digital Content and Skills,
The Audience Agency

Dr. Synatra Smith is a cultural anthropologist exploring extended reality (XR) and other digital tools to enhance special collections and archival records featuring African American art, history, and culture with the specific intention of documenting workflows that can be shared with students, cultural heritage workers, and scholars interested in building digital projects without relying on a large budget or team. She sits at the intersection of researcher; gallery, library, archives, and museum (GLAM) professional; and digital humanities practitioner. Storytelling and narrative-building are central to that experience and her goal is to identify ways to engage target user communities throughout the life of these projects through more inclusive means that integrate feedback loops and myriad learning styles. 

Antonia Silvaggi is the Co-founder of Melting Pro, a cultural consultancy based in Rome with international reach. She promotes learning approaches and capacity-building programmes focused on participation, practical action, peer learning, and the development of relational skills.

With a passion for facilitating safe spaces for experimentation, Antonia integrates design thinking and human-centred approaches to foster innovation in cultural organizations. She specializes in capacity building, mentoring, action learning, and digital storytelling, mutated by the Storycenter in Berkeley, while also exploring digital tools for distance learning.

Antonia has contributed to projects like MU.SA, helping develop digital skills for museum professionals in Italy, Greece and Portugal. As a strategic consultant, she supports audience development and engagement strategies to make culture more accessible and impactful.

Kellian is the Director of G.L.A.M. (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) Innovation at FableVision Studios in Boston MA. FableVision is a games and animation studio with a focus on educational content. With her team at FableVision, Kellian has built games with the National Gallery of Art, Plimoth Patuxet and the American Library Association among others. She's currently working on Project AMI, building 20 game-based prototypes in 20 months with an association of eight different museums in Switzerland and the US including SFMOMA and the Swiss LandesMuseum.

Prior to joining Fablevision Kellian was founder and Mastermind of Green Door Labs creating games, immersive theater, and physical/digital interactive experiences such as Murder at the Met, the Mystery of the Megatherium Club at the Smithsonian or AVATAR at the Peabody Essex Museum. Kellian has also taught game design at Northeastern University, is on the board of the Playable Theater Project and “FIG Learns” from the Festival of Indie Games. She’s currently working on a book about – of course- museums and games.

Member, Royal Burgh of Lanark Community Council

Assoc. Prof, PhD Kalina Ivanova is the Director of Petko R. Slaveykov Regional Public Library, Veliko Tarnovo since 2019 until present. She was team leader and coordinator from the side of "Petko R. Slaveykov" Regional Library, Veliko Tarnovo in number of Projects such as: Digital cultural treasure "North +", MobiDig, DigiPrior, TechLibrary, MobiReel, etc. Head and coordinator of projects under the Lifelong Learning Program and Programs for the Protection of Literary and Cultural-Historical Heritage in Libraries, Museums and Archives.

Kalina Ivanova was awarded in May 2017 with the "Golden Century" badge of honor for contribution to the development of Bulgarian culture. Member of the Board of the Bulgarian Library and Information Association since 2009 and in March 2024 she is the Chairman of the Bulgarian Library and Information Association-Sofia. Member of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria - Veliko Tarnovo branch since 2009. Member of the Editorial Board of "Biblioteka" magazine since 2014.

Since 2015, he is the main assistant at the Department of "Book publishing and library information activities", Faculty of "Mathematics and Informatics" of VTU "St. St. Cyril and Methodius".

From 11.05. 2020 - until now - position of Associate Professor at ULSIT-Sofia.
She has published a number of publications in the following fields: Library and cultural management and marketing, archival and documentary studies, digitization and digital collections, international interaction and aspects in the library activities, etc.Ed Archer, Member of Royal Burgh of Lanark Community Council .

With a background in archaeology, she joined the Italian Ministry of Culture in 2002 as a project manager for EU funded projects on digitisation policies and programmes. From 2008 to 2018 she worked at the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of the Italian Libraries (ICCU) as a project manager in several national and international digitisation projects and was responsible for supporting European cultural institutions in the content aggregation for Europeana.