Debi Banerjee

Curator for Learning

3 – 4 days per week

Email Debi Banerjee

Chris Coatham

Learning Assistant

Freelance, project focused

Email Chris Coatham

Uist Corrigan

Technician

3 days per week

Contact Uist Corrigan about project planning in all the workshops, including ceramics and kiln bookings.

Email Uist Corrigan

Lynn Cowan

Front of House Manager

3 days per week, Tuesday – Thursday

Contact Lynn Cowan about studios admin, storage, admin systems, descriptive touch tours, Members Opportunities Newsletter, keys and fobs.

Email Lynn Cowan

Vicky Higginson

Technical Assistant (Maternity Cover)

1 day per week

Email Vicky Higginson

Gillian Ingram

Front of House

3 days per week, Thursday – Saturday

Contact Gillian Ingram about memberships, kiln charges, casting charges, inductions and general enquiries.

Email Gillian Ingram

Gabriele Jogelaite

Technical Assistant

1 day per week

Email Gabriele Jogelaite

Richard Moore

Building Technician

2 days per week, Thursday – Friday

Contact Richard Moore about the building including studio maintenance and the Health & Safety Committee.

Email Richard Moore

Stephen Murray

Technician (currently on sabbatical until 1 February 2026)

4 days per week

Contact Stephen Murray about project planning in all the workshops, including casting projects.

Email Stephen Murray

Laura Simpson

Director

Full time

Email Laura Simpson

Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani

Board Member

Dr. Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani is Lecturer in History of Art, Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh. She specialises in modern and contemporary art of the global diasporas, and is currently focussing on the postcolonial histories of African, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Black British art in Britain and beyond.  As a postdoctoral research associate at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven Connecticut, she co-curated the exhibition Bridget Riley: Perceptual Abstraction (2022), and has held numerous curatorial positions, including the Wichita Art Museum and the Ulrich Museum of Art, in Wichita, Kansas, USA; the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, USA; and Tate Liverpool, UK. Maryam has published widely on diasporic artists including Denis Williams, Frank Bowling, and the Caribbean Artists Movement. Her current research project examines the visual construction of the ‘Commonwealth,’ reflected or criticised in art practices, films and exhibitions produced in Britain and the Commonwealth between 1948-1978. 

Nicky Thomson

Vice Chair, Board Member

Nicky Thomson is an ARB registered Architect. She graduated from the Mackintosh School of Architecture/Glasgow School of Art, working at architectural practices in Sydney and Los Angeles during and after her studies. Since 2003, she has been based in Scotland and has worked for several award-winning Scottish practices including Sutherland Hussey Harris, Hoskins Architects and Reiach and Hall Architects. In 2018, she established STUDIO NIRO, an architecture and design practice, which is based at Custom Lane in Leith.

Along with her work in practice Nicky is a design tutor at ESALA (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture) and prior to that was a design tutor at Strathclyde University and the Mackintosh School of Architecture. She currently leads a 4th Year Unit in the Architectural Design Tectonics course called REORDER: the beauty of reuse, is on the advisory panel of the AE Foundation and has recently completed a season as a guest co-producer of Talks at the Lane.

Nicola Anderson

Board Member and Chair of the Staff, Welfare and Remuneration Committee

Nicola Anderson is a senior HR Professional with over 20 years experience in the public sector, including the NHS and the civil service.  Nicola has held positions as Head of HR for the Scottish Ambulance Service, Head of HR and Organisational Development for the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, and Head of Workforce Relations within the Directorate for Health Workforce at Scottish Government

Edward Frizzell

Chair, Board Member

Eddie studied history and political economy at the University of Glasgow.  He worked as an economist for some years before joining the then Scottish Office (now Scottish Government) in 1976. Following a spell dealing with agriculture and fisheries and a secondment to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Brussels he served in a number of roles, including Director of Scotland’s inward investment agency, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, and – after Devolution in 1999 – Head (Director General) of the Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department.

He has wide experience of governance, as Chair of Court at Abertay University Dundee, Chair of Trustees of Trefoil House, a charity helping disadvantaged young people, Vice-Chair of the Scottish Ambulance Service, an independent member of the Audit Committee of the English prison service, and a co-opted member of the Audit Committee of Edinburgh College of Art. He was for 10 years an Honorary Professor at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.

Eddie has kept up his life long interest in art as a Friend of the National Galleries, and by taking part in evening classes in drawing, painting and sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art and elsewhere.

Kate Davis

Board Member

Artist and Senior Tutor (Royal College of Art, London)

Kate is an artist based in London and Edinburgh. Her work moves between material object, drawing, photography, video, performative lectures and text based works that are centred in the discipline of sculpture.
She has taught extensively from Foundation level to PhD throughout the UK and has held numerous External Examiner roles. She was made a Fellow of the Royal College in 2009 for her exceptional teaching and is currently External Examiner at the University of Northampton.

Kate has exhibited widely nationally and internationally and has received numerous awards, including the Sydney Water Sculpture Prize; the first Jerwood Drawing 1st Prize; the Sargant Fellowship, British School at Rome, the Stanley Picker Fellowship and Young Artist of the Year, Whitechapel Gallery .

In 2010 she began working with the Scottish artist David Moore. They have collaborated on a number of exhibitions and large-scale permanent public commissions here and abroad including Langdon Park ,a Dockland Light Railway and Riverlight, the new St James’ development designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in Nine Elms, London.

Irineu Destourelles

Board Member

Irineu Rocha da Cruz (AKA Irineu Destourelles) is a visual artist based in Glasgow. Irineu’s work has been exhibited and screened at the Art Institute of Chicago, Center for Modern Art Gulbenkian (Lisbon), Transmission (Glasgow), Transmediale (Berlin) and Videobrasil (São Paulo) amongst others. He is an experienced engagement and learning professional with previous roles at the National Maritime Museum in London; as the Director of M_EIA, a visual arts and design higher education institution in his native Cape Verde; and within EU funded cultural development projects in West Africa. He received a BA Fine Art from Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, an MA Fine Art at Central St. Martins, London and holds a PhD in Film studies from UCL, London.

Giulia Gentili

Board Member

Giulia Gentili is an artist and technician who, until recently, was a Graduate Studio Holder at ESW. She received an MA Fine Art from Edinburgh College of Art and has worked recently within a variety of organisations including as a workshop technician at the Glasgow School of Art and at Edinburgh College of Art. She also has experience of exhibition installation work across Scotland including recent projects at Talbot Rice Gallery, Dundee Contemporary Arts and with East Lothian Council. In a prior role Gentili worked with the union Unite initiating worker support infrastructures. http://www.giuliagentili.com/

Dr Julian Luxford

Board Member

Julian is a historian of medieval art, architecture and ideas.

He has degrees from the universities of La Trobe (in Melbourne) and Cambridge (PhD), and was a Junior Research Fellow at Clare College Cambridge. Julian came to the University of St Andrews in 2004, and is currently Head of the School of Art History there.

Among other things, he is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries on London, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Royal Historical Society; a council member of the British Archaeological Association, and a member of the Durham Cathedral Fabric Advisory Committee as a representative of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England.

Beth Grieve

Board Member and Chair if the Finance & Governance Committee 

Kathlyn McKellar

Board Member

Kathlyn is a senior manager with a background in HR and general management primarily within the public sector, with experience of working at Board and Executive Team level. From 2011 to 2015 she was Head of HR with  Healthcare Improvement Scotland, leading HR strategy for this new organisation and working with the Board and Chief Executive to ensure that effective staff governance arrangements were in place.

Before that Kathlyn was Head of HR at NHS Quality Improvement Scotland for over seven years and prior to that was Personnel Manager at Edinburgh’s Telford College. Kathlyn graduated with a BA (Joint Honours) in German and French from Strathclyde University and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Michael Trainor

Board Member

Michael Trainor has been a professional artist and art commissioner for 20+ years. His work includes large-scale interventions in the public realm, installations and exhibitions, art events and evolving projects with communities that take place over many years. He is finalising PhD research (through Art Practice) at Edinburgh College of Art on artists’ responses to nuclear weapons and creating a new body of work based on their psychological impact in contemporary culture. He spends too much time thinking about the end of the world!

He is a collector of design and ephemera and a specialist in the language of objects, their social history and what they mean to us; his collection was acquired as a public resource in 1999 making him one of very few people to have all their possessions in a museum without being dead. He is a Clore fellow and has led several publicly funded arts organisations and major projects.