Erin Reilly is a creator, educator and strategist. Her career spans more than 25 years, during which she has invented new approaches, products, services and experiences for storytelling and audience engagement through immersive technology. Erin currently serves as professor of practice in the Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations as well as founding director of Texas Immersive Institute, the interactive and immersive media hub at the University of Texas at Austin focused on research, projects and learning the future of media. In her role, she has developed a new sequence of courses, guides faculty and students in imagining where innovation meets entrepreneurship and builds university-wide initiatives, fostering relationships with other academic institutions and industry partners. She also integrated the Meta Quest 2 VR headset as the textbook for the Audience Development & Engagement class (this was a first for a UT Austin classroom).
As a strategist, Erin consults with private and public companies in the areas of audience engagement, creative strategy and transmedia storytelling. She has been a frequent guest lecturer worldwide at universities as well as industry conferences such as TEDx, SXSW and Austin Forum on Technology & Society. Erin is on the Hasbro Innovator list and is currently raising the second round of funding for CARPE’ Games, a new augmented reality and SMART kit game, and Winklebeans, a sensor-based toy that connects to a data-driven story world.
Erin was a founding member of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, holding the positions of managing creative director and research fellow from 2010 to 2018. Before that, she was research director for Project New Media Literacies at MIT and has conducted classes as a visiting lecturer at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and Harvard University’s Project Zero Summer Institute. She is a graduate of Emerson College and holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in film/multimedia from Maine Media Workshops + College.
BOARDS AND ADVISORY ROLES
- Walking Cinema Museum of the Hidden City project
- Infinity Festival, execute committee
- Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Interactive Media Peer Group
- National Association for Media Literacy Education, previous board president
- SXSW Pitch
- PBS Children’s shows “Hero Elementary” and Emmy-award winning, “Sci Girls.”
RESEARCH
- Reilly, E. and Hewitt, S. (expected 2024). "Remix in the Age of AI" book chapter. The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies, 2nd edition. Edited by Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, and xtine burrough
- “Immersive in a University Setting”
- Research on empathy with Headspace VR
- Developed “Fan Favorites”—a fan engagement framework—in Strategy + Business Magazine
- Defined transmedia play with “T is for Transmedia: Learning through Transmedia Play”
- Co-authored “Reading in a Participatory Culture.”
- Commerce in the Metaverse
- The Impact of AI on the creative industry
IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
- “Space Shapers”
- “Camp Cura”
- “Be a Longhorn,” Gold award winner for American Advertising Award 2022; Finalist for Indie Creator Auggie Award 2021
- “Solar Run”
- “Shifted Space”
- “Roses of the Rubble,” short-listed for a Yugo BAFTA student award
- “The In-Between,” short-listed for a Yugo BAFTA student award
- “Elysian Heights,” long-listed for a Yugo BAFTA student award
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
- President’s Global Award, Japan; 2024-2025
- Faculty Development Award, Japan; 2024
- Yugo Student BAFTA, Longlist for “Elysian Heights”; 2024
- Women Leaders of Austin – Women We Admire Finalist; 2024
- HATCH Europe in Caux, Switzerland, 1 or 100 innovators worldwide invited; 2023
- PwC’s The Emerging Tech Exchange, Guest Respondent; 2023
- Yugo Student BAFTA, Shortlist for “Roses of the Rubble” and “The In Between”; 2023
- Affordable Education Champion, UT Austin, Nominated by students; 2023
- Ally for Women & Girls in Tech, Finalist for Women in Computing; 2022
- American Advertising Federation, Gold Addy, “Be a Longhorn”; 2022
- American Advertising Federation, Silver Addy, “Solar Run”; 2022
- Augmented World Expo, Finalist, Indie Creator “Be a Longhorn”; 2021
- Annenberg Foundation, Innovation Award; 2018
- Innovation Fellow, West Virginia University; 2017
- Los Angeles Tech Innovation Award, Annenberg Foundation; 2017