I helped devise, found, recruit and not sit on the Scientific Board of this body. Along with other Romany Studies scholars of my generation, most of whom had been teachers at the summer schools I organized in Budapest I have long argued the need for a body that would re-group and better present scholarship to policy makers. The resulting body currently has 193 full members (academics or in full time research) and 143 associate members (masters students and others). This body, is now regularly called upon to give academic advise on EU-wide initiatives (such as the National Plans for Roma Integration).

MyStreet is an innovative example of participatory research in which filmmakers are trained and facilitated to turn their cameras on their own environments and reflect ethnographically on their everyday experience using techniques some of which were inspired by my research on Mass Observation. It is thus a contribution to practice-based research and an innovative form of Knowledge Exchange. MyStreet has lain the foundations for a distributed, collaborative, shared ‘science of ourselves’, aiming to dissolve the researcher/ researched distinction. Whereas conventional ethnography involves a filtering and selection of voices by the anthropologist, MyStreet facilitates a multi-authored polyphony of multiple and diverse perspectives. In a 2013 publication (in Social Anthropology), I describe how vernacular filmmaking helps dissolve the producer/ consumer boundary through an explicit rejection of the traditional power relations of broadcast documentary.

My work in Knowledge Transfer and Exchange work as well as my entrepreneurial bent has led to the creation of London’s (only) global documentary film festival, Open City Docs Fest which has run at UCL for three years now. This festival which has increased its audience from c 1,500 in its first year to over 4,000 in its third year, more than doubling its ticket income along the way, has established itself as both a major event in the London arts’ calendar and as a unique way in which UCL expresses its commitment to and engagement with the broad London Community. My entrepreneurship here has involved several different sorts of recombination. The festival temporarily reverses the normal flow of innovation in a university, bringing creators of documentary film into UCL to engage with our own expertise. In order to make the festival an organic part of UCL life I have had to win the hearts and minds of academics across the university to persuade them of the value of this sort of public engagement. Finally, I have had to raise the funds each year to run the festival – at c £200,000 a year. I have done so from entrepreneurial activities linked to film training and production, from mobilizing private donors and mobilizing UCL resources across the campus, winning significant grant support from faculties across the university.