I’m a writer (fiction, non-fiction, poetry) and researcher (politics, economics, technology).
My fiction and poetry has been published in Magma, Planet magazine, Vice’s Terraform SF magazine, and Arc Magazine (published by New Scientist), and featured on BBC Radio 4.
Between 2012-2019, I worked at the Centre for Global Studies, mainly researching the future of work and automation. I co-edited a collection of essays by leading economists, computer scientists, data experts, policy specialists, journalists and anthropologists on the future of our working lives, which you can find/order here from Palgrave or from Amazon.
In December 2019 I joined General Assembly’s Data Science Immersive class and spent three months learning to code in Python, investigate and visualise data, and build predictive models. It was partly about gaining extra quantitative skills to complement the qualitative research skills I already had, and partly about fulfilling a secret urge I’d always had to learn a programming language properly. Now I work as a Data Scientist at Faethm by Pearson which is building tools to help people reskill and ameliorate some of the effects of automation on the workforce.
I think people are more and more used to having quite divergent, diverse careers, but there is in fact a link between my writing and the various day jobs I’ve had: it’s actually all about trying to understand how and why things happen. I want to understand why the world is the way it is, and where it’s going. Also, I just like making things, and most of the things I make are stories.
Having said that, I’m also drawing and painting a lot more recently! If you’d like to see that follow me on Instagram @nanlizacraig, where I’m posting drawings and, occasionally, poems.