Milly Farrell

Milly joined the Big Data Institute (BDI) in 2018 and manages the public engagement programme and strategy. Milly’s role is focused on developing a range of methods, events and activities which actively involve the public in the many different research strands at the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities (WEH). 

Some of the major engagement projects Milly has coordinated have involved both arts-based work and local schools partnerships. One longstanding collaboration has been with local theatre company ‘Creation Theatre’, who co-created a theatrical adaptation of HG Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’ in 2020, interweaving WEH’s research into the script.

This project led to spin-out activities involving local high schools, which included workshops on Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’. These arts-based projects incorporated various research themes from the WEH, which informed contemporary versions of each story.

Before joining the WEH, Milly trained in skeletal forensics and began her career as a curator, working on human remains collections at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons, and at the Museum of London. Through a range of outreach projects and exhibitions, Milly worked to engage the public in the research of these museums; with a particular focus on disability access, engagement with collections for people who are blind or partially sighted and the ethics of display and repatriation.

Prior to her work at WEH, Milly was the Research Engagement Officer at Oxford Brookes University. In her five years at Brookes, Milly worked on a range of science communication and outreach events, and established the University’s Public Engagement Network in 2017.