An Academic Global Gathering: AI, 360 and the Stories We Tell Next
A Stornaway Academic Summit
June 25th 2026Â
Join us for an hour with four practitioners shaping how interactive storytelling lives in the classroom, the field, and the wider world.
Our speakers will share their work and then give you a chance to ask questions.
They’ll cover:
- A student workshop in Italy
- Creating 360 projects with Undergraduate Students
- An interactive, consequence-driven film for group sessions to empower women in South Africa
- An award-winning AI film is travelling the festival circuit
This is a chance for anyone teaching, researching, and making with interactive media to compare notes about what’s exciting, what’s working, and what we’re all still figuring out.
Some of us are leaning into AI and 360; others are watching carefully from the sidelines. Both are welcome here!
You don’t need to be a Stornaway user to join. You just need to be curious about where interactive storytelling is going next.
đź‘‹ Meet our Special Guests
Bradley Jefferson
Bradley Jefferson is an AI Product Manager at The Walt Disney Company and an award-winning generative AI filmmaker specializing in interactive storytelling, immersive media, and emerging creative workflows. His 2025 interactive film Albert’s Riddle won Gold at the Seoul International AI Film Festival and Best Interactive Film at the British Film Festival. With a background spanning enterprise AI, XR, game development, and narrative design, Bradley’s work explores how generative AI can transform audience participation, nonlinear storytelling, and educational experiences through interactive cinema.
Bradley’s most recent creative work, produced in partnership with the Hollywood Writers Room for the Meta AI social platform, can be viewed at Replicant Dream Cinema. His generative animation work will also be prominently featured in the upcoming independent film Turnbuckle, starring Emile Hirsch, Kate Beckinsale, and Terrence Howard.
📲 Contact Bradley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleyjefferson/
Laura Cossu
Laura Cossu is an educational game designer and a Cinema and Media Engineer, graduated with honors from Politecnico di Torino. Her work explores transmedia storytelling, interactive narratives, and educational experiences where creativity and technology are used to design meaningful and engaging learning processes.
She runs the Stornaway Lab within the Transmedia course of the Cinema and Media Engineering program at Politecnico di Torino, where she experiments with innovative approaches to digital storytelling and interactive media.
📲 Contact Laura on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauracossu/
Sarah Van Borek
Sarah Van Borek is a bilingual (English/French) Canadian media artist, documentary filmmaker, educator and arts-based researcher specialising in innovative research methodologies, creative knowledge translation and community engagement with 20+ years living and working in Sub-Saharan Africa and 9+ years of post-secondary teaching experience.Â
Sarah has postdoctoral experience developing participatory audiovisual methods across Africa. Sarah holds a PhD in Environmental Education from Rhodes University, South Africa, where she explored water justice, reconciliation, and decolonising higher education through a media arts-based water curriculum piloted in South Africa and Canada.
She also has an MFA in Film and TV from the University of Cape Town that focused on youth-led music television to address girls’ rights. From 2012-2021, Sarah designed and taught undergraduate courses with Canada’s top art and design post-secondary institution, the Emily Carr University of Art + Design. As an artist-scholar, she bridges communities, academia, and policy, building trust and collaboration. She brings strong global networks and ongoing collaborations to scale impact.
📲 Contact Sarah: https://sarahvanborek.co.za/
John Moore
📲 Contact John on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-spottswood-moore-3b957999
