Exploring Interactive Documentary with Stornaway
A Stornaway Academic Summit
Watch the recap
November 2025
We are delighted to welcome our global academic community to the November Academic Summit, where we will explore innovative uses of Stornaway in teaching and research.
Our special guests, Dr. Judith Aston and Dr. Stefano Odorico, will share insights from their polyphonic documentary project, demonstrating how Stornaway’s interactive storytelling tools are shaping new ways of thinking, teaching (in and outside of the classroom), and researching with local communities.
This session will offer a unique opportunity to see their work in action, discuss creative processes and academic applications, and ask questions about integrating polyphonic and interactive approaches into your own academic practice.
We look forward to connecting with you for an inspiring and thought-provoking session.
👋 Meet our Special Guests
Dr Judith Aston
Dr Judith Aston is an Associate Professor in Film and Digital Arts at the University of the West of England in Bristol. She is Co-founder of i-Docs and Chair of the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Film Committee. She has an interdisciplinary background in creative media practice, interaction design and visual anthropology. At the heart of her work is the desire to put evolving media technologies into the service of promoting multi-perspectival thinking and understanding.
📲 Contact Judith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judithaston/
Dr Stefano Odorico
Dr Stefano Odorico is a lecturer, a curator and a filmmaker, currently lecturing at the Technological University of the Shannon (Ireland). He is also co-organiser of the Interactive Film and Media Conference (IFM), co-founder and member of the consultative board of Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media and Visiting Research Fellow at Leeds Trinity University (UK).
📲 Contact Stefano on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefano-odorico-21b7a0236/
Bonus Guest:
Lena Dobrowolska
Lena Dobrowolska is a Lecturer & Research Associate, Royal College of Art & University of Sheffield School of Architecture.
We will be sharing a little of Lena’s Stornaway School presentation from earlier this year. Lena will also join us live for a Q&A.
Lena presents the Climate ReAssemblies project at the University of Sheffield, which brings together diverse groups of citizens to co-create scenarios inspired by recommendations from the 2023 South Yorkshire Climate Assembly.
This dynamic and evolving initiative posed the question, ‘What’s next? ” and used interactive documentary-making to rethink and innovate follow-on activities after climate assemblies. The aim was to inspire hope and action in the face of seemingly insurmountable global climate issues.
💡Learn more about the ReAssemblies project: https://player.sheffield.ac.uk/events/climate-reassemblies
📲 Contact Lena on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lena-dobrowolska-91713614b/
🎒The Projects
Having started by working online with a global community of academics and practitioners, Judith and Stefano have more recently been applying their polyphonic documentary methodology to local communities:
Avonmouth an Interactive Conversation
Avonmouth an Interactive Conversation is using Stornaway.io in an innovative way to facilitate dialogue between business and community stakeholders around just transition. It is pushing the software in new directions, moving it away from a branched narrative structure towards more of a thematically-led set of filmed testimonies layered in place.
These testimonies (collated from ethnographic interviews) articulate different perspectives and points of view about Avonmouth, as seen from a selection of long-standing residents, relatively recent incomers, community leaders, and local businesses which have grown up around the Port of Bristol.
The project is designed to be used to help shift thinking in workshop and/or live performance settings. Its interactive nature means that it can be performed in different ways for multiple audiences as the project continues and its impact grows.
Next steps include bringing environmental perspectives into the mix and user-testing the project to create a shareable version of the project.
Led by Judith Aston (University of the West of England Bristol), it is a collaboration with Karen Boswall (Independent filmmaker and researcher), Rengin Gurel Osman (Designer and PhD researcher), The Avonmouth Community Centre and the Polyphonic Documentary Project.
The Voices of Lough Corrib
The Voices of Lough Corrib is a dynamic, community-driven audiovisual project that enables audiences to explore Ireland’s largest lake through the perspectives of its surrounding communities. Combining personal testimonies, creative reflections, and local narratives, the project creates a multifaceted portrayal of Lough Corrib as both an ecological and socio-cultural landmark.
Developed through video contributions from residents, it presents an ever-evolving mosaic of voices, ensuring that each view offers a unique configuration of stories and insights. The interactive interface features four thematic pathways—Heritage, Environment, Water, and Recreation—which guide users in shaping their own narrative journeys.
Viewers may follow a single theme or move fluidly among all four, reflecting the interconnectedness of the lake’s natural, historical, and social dimensions. A collaboration between Stefano Odorico (Limerick School of Art and Design, Technological University of the Shannon – TUS), Ilaria Vecchi (The University of Sheffield), Corrib Beo, and the Polyphonic Documentary Project — The Voices of Lough Corrib aspires to function as a living archive.
It seeks not only to document contemporary experiences of the lake but also to foster ongoing engagement, dialogue, and creative expression within the community.