Dr. Tegan Bristow is the Director of the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival since 2016, Senior Lecturer in Interactive Digital Media at the Wits School of the Arts – with a specialisation on African Art, Culture and Technology and Editor in Chief and Digital Editor of the Ellipses Journal for Creative Research. Bristow is additionally a developer of interactive digital media in installation, performance, screen-based and online media.

In 2017 Bristow completed her PhD on Decoloniality and Actional Methodologies in Art and Cultural Practices in African Cultures of Technology, which she wrote with the Planetary Collegium at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Arts at Plymouth University in the U.K.

In Bristow’s Directorial role for Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival she works annually with local partners and international organisation to support the Festival and its implementation. Alongside fundraising, annual curation and program development, Bristow leads a small annually engage group of producers and project managers in developing and managing multiple content producers and creative partners across the African continent and internationally.  The Festival supports: VR / AR, Animation, Gaming, Critical Digital Arts Practices and questions of the digital in Creative Economies. Under Bristow’s directorship the Festival has grown into an internationally recognised IP that not only critically supports the development of culture and technology in Africa, but has become an important market place for new work with in these industries in the region.

In her role as Senior Lecturer at the Wits School of Arts, Bristow developed and ran the Masters in Interactive Media in the Digital Arts Department from 2007 to 2017. And further developed three programs in Internet Art, Creative Coding and Data Visualisation and most recently theory  in African Culture and Technology. In this period, Bristow has continued to supervise Masters research in these areas.

As curator (outside of Fak’ugesi Festival) Bristow’s curatorial highlights include in 2018, Digital Imaginaries with Afro Pixel (Senegal), Wits Art Museum (South Africa) and the ZKM (Germany). In 2017, the 2^nd Season of the Centre for the Less Good Idea.  In 2015, Post African Futures with the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.  Outside of her curatorial and development work within culture and technology in Africa,  Bristow has exhibited her own practice widely and regularly publishes her research.