With a professional background as an artistic director and strategy consultant, Ian specializes in cultural insight, brand identity and soft power development via contemporary art and cultural heritage. Ian has expertise in Greater China and US markets leading projects with businesses, arts and cultural organizations and universities engaged in the global exchange of goods, services and ideas. Ian also has ten years’ experience in the performing arts, touring and performing internationally with the award-winning vocal group Anúna.

Recent projects include: Design Consultant for Wafaa Bilal’s 186:01 at the House of Wisdom in Sharjah, Melvin Edwards’s Festivals, Funerals, and New Life featuring works by Jayne Cortez, Project Development Consultant for Tania Bruguera’s 10,148,451 for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, Mark Dion’s Against the Current, Fatma Bucak’s And men turned their faces from there, Vincent Valdez’s The Strangest Fruit and Wafaa Bilal’s The Ashes Series. 

Ian’s research and teaching address contemporary art, creative entrepreneurship, cultural production, curating, heritage studies and public speaking. 

Ian’s writing has been published by Cambridge University Press, Cittadellarte, deCordova Museum & Sculpture Park, Lars Muller Publishers, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Oxford University Press, Springer-Kluwer and Yapı Kredi Publishers.

Ian received a Ph.D. in History from Trinity College Dublin. He has held the posts of Artistic Director of the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Associate Professor in Cultural Studies and Director of the MA Programme in Cultural Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Artistic Director and Chief Curator with K11 in Beijing, Curator of Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery, Lecturer in the Rhode Island School of Design’s Glass Department, Instructor with Brown University’s School of Professional Studies and Assistant Professor of Curating and Contemporary Art at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. He has held fellowships at Brown University, University of Notre Dame and University College Dublin.