Francesca Panetta

Director, AKO Storytelling Institute

Francesca is an Emmy award-winning immersive artist and journalist. She has long been a pioneer in new forms of storytelling, running the Guardian's vanguard initiatives for over a decade including podcasting, immersive features and virtual reality. While at the Guardian, her work included a VR exploration of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons called 6x9, and a child development-based work about seeing the world through a baby’s eyes called First Impressions.

While Creative Director at MIT’s Centre for Advanced Virtuality, she made flagship work that pushed XR storytelling, including In Event of Moon Disaster. Her most recent work includes a collaboration with artist Halsey Burgund on the AI art-experiment Vocalise. Her films and artwork have won critical acclaim and been shown at MOMI, MOMA, Barbican and Sainsbury Centre, at Cannes and Tribeca film festivals, as well as at the White House and European Commission. She was a 2019 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.