Walking (slowly) towards Space by Dr Niamh Shaw

In 2014 Niamh Shaw announced to the world that she wanted to go to space; and then she made a show about it. ​’​To Space​’​ explored her impossible dream and the current state of the space industry. It’s now 201​7​ and where is she on her lifelong dream ​and how has it evolved in the past three years? ​

‘Walking slowly Towards Space’ will see Niamh sharing her journey, illuminat​ing ​the relevance of space in our society​, her progress, her struggles and challenges, and explaining why she has devoted the remainder of her life to fulfilling a childhood dream.

Bio:
Dr Niamh Shaw, engineer, scientist & performer is passionate about awakening people’s curiosity, merging performance & theatre with communication, engineering, science, art, & technology. She is interested in pushing boundaries in telling the human story behind science, creating science events for family & arts audiences. Niamh speaks on thought leadership & provides specialised communication, ideation & futures workshops in the private sector & co-founded a new communications centre for academics in Ireland with UCD and the Tyndall Institute​ ​in affiliation with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science in New York.

Niamh is passionate about all things Space & plans to get there within the next 8 years. As alumnus of ISU’s Space Studies Programme​ ​(SSP)​ ​2015, she lectured on the Humanities programme of SSP 2016 & is Core Lectures Assoc Chair for SSP17​ ​which comes to CIT Cork this summer. She recently returned from a simulated Mars mission at MDRS in the Utah desert as Crew Artist and Journalist. As artist in residence at CIT Blackrock Castle Observatory, Cork, her STEAM lecture/performance piece, ‘To Space’, toured internationally from 2014-16 & was supported by Culture Ireland, ESA and the Arts Council of Ireland. She has begun making her next theatre piece ‘A Hand in Space’ funded under SFI’s 2017 Discover programme, working closely with ESA’s Astronaut Centre in Cologne. She is the Dublin point of contact for Space week Ireland & is Northern Ireland Space Ambassador for ESA’s education and resource office (ESERO UK).

Niamh is an advocate of ‘Women in STEM’, & was recently voted one of Ireland’s top 10 science communicators by Silicon Republic acknowledging her work in STEAM & contributions on national TV, radio, press & public speaking events incl. TEDxUCD, World Science Festival. She co-founded STEAMakers.co & is a member of function(core), an international transdisciplinary problem-solving & ideation collective.

Niamh believes that we can be many things at the same time. She is curious, always & embraces failure every day.