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In 2026, Associate Professor Natalia Grincheva was awarded the prestigious Digital Statecraft Academy Cambridge Fellowship. Hosted by the Digital Statecraft Academy, the fellowship brings together international experts to address the faltering of traditional public institutions in the algorithmic age. It provides an advanced strategic framework to support leaders in building ethical, data-driven public infrastructure and advancing dynamic, adaptive governance.
The Fellowship Programme serves as a robust platform to execute the project, Data for Culture | 2030: Designing an Open-Source, Proxy-Driven, AI-assisted Data Model for the UNESCO Culture|2030 Indicators Framework. Developed in close collaboration with UNESCO, this initiative addresses critical structural barriers in global cultural policy, including data fragmentation, severe regional “data vacuums,” resource constraints, and Western-centric measurement biases that marginalize local contexts.
The project designs a lightweight, scalable, and federated data methodology for the 22 UNESCO Culture | 2030 Indicators. Rather than relying solely on traditional national data collection, the framework leverages publicly accessible, open-source datasets across environmental, socio-economic, and labor domains to act as proxies for cultural activity. By integrating AI-assisted techniques—such as automated data gap imputation, pattern recognition, and correlation analysis—the model can infer missing indicators in data-sparse environments while preserving national data sovereignty through an API-driven architecture.
Associate Professor Natalia Grincheva is the conceptual designer behind the Data To Power platform—an innovative, web-based system tailored for inductive academic research and multi-layered GIS mapping. By automating the aggregation and visualization of multi-source datasets, the framework allows scholars to interrogate complex global phenomena through spatial analysis, exposing hidden interrelationships and contextualizing disparate data without imposing rigid predefined narratives.
The flagship implementation of this architecture is the Hallyu Tracker, an AI-enabled, open-access platform mapping the three-decade global expansion of the Korean Wave. Synthesizing over 300 datasets across diverse macroeconomic and cultural variables, the Hallyu Tracker operationalizes the Data To Power methodology to bridge institutional and industrial data silos.
By juxtaposing macro-level export trends against localized sentiment and consumption patterns, it enables researchers to trace Hallyu’s soft power footprint down to specific geographic locations. Committed to radical methodological transparency regarding data provenance and imputation, Prof. Grincheva’s design democratizes knowledge, transforming fragmented statistics into dynamic, evidence-driven spatial intelligence for critical academic exploration.
Associate Professor Natalia Grincheva’s extensive advisory record bridges scholarly innovation and practical policymaking across global governments, intergovernmental organizations, and creative industries. Her high-level consultations span international bodies, including the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) Cultural and Creative Industries Advisory Group (CCIAG), the UN Statistics Division, and the British Council, alongside government agencies in the US, UK, Australia, Singapore, Canada, and South Korea. Her industry advisory portfolio includes strategic engagements with global entities such as Google, Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG), and the Fiker Institute.
A hallmark of this impact was demonstrated during her 2025 Hallyu Mapping Forum in South Korea. Presenting the AI-enabled Hallyu Tracker platform, Dr. Grincheva engaged key government bodies—including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE), the Korea Culture Information Service (KOCIS), and the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute (KCTI)—to showcase how computational mapping transforms cultural policy analysis. Supported by outreach to intergovernmental bodies like the ASEAN-Korea Centre, industry forums such as the K-Content Academy, music tech enterprises like Space Oddity, and a public installation at Seoul Culture Lounge, the Forum established new benchmarks for ethical, human-AI collaboration in global cultural analytics.
Associate Professor Natalia Grincheva’s industry partnerships bridge academic research and practical applications in the global museum sector. Grounded in her doctoral dissertation on Digital Museum Diplomacy, which featured interviews with dozens of major museums across the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, her research established deep institutional collaborations worldwide.
Her explorations into museum soft power began in 2018 through direct collaboration with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and expanded to partnerships with leading cultural organizations, including the Science Museum Group in London and the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. In 2022, Prof. Grincheva spearheaded the development of the Data To Power mapping prototype through a collaborative project, “GLAM and Digital Soft Power in the Post-pandemic World,” with the Digital Diplomacy Research Group at the University of Oxford.
The initiative convened over 200 museum professionals, digital creatives, and cultural researchers globally. Working with more than 25 Asia-Pacific museums, the project integrated data analysis, geo-visualization, and machine learning to measure and predict the digital soft power of GLAM institutions, equipping them with evidence-based strategies to navigate hyperconnected global environments.
In her role as Leader of the BA Arts Management programme, Prof. Natalia Grincheva has spearheaded transformative industry collaborations by bridging student learning with real-world creative sector challenges. Serving as major producer and securing external partnerships across all project initiatives, she redesigned the Arts Projects module into a dynamic client-led incubator that attracted over 30 high-profile collaborative applications since 2021.
Under her direction, these collaborations produced impactful student-led solutions for major government agencies, non-profits, and cultural enterprises, including the National Arts Council (NAC), National Heritage Board (NHB), Land Transport Authority (LTA), Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Esplanade, STPI, Children's Museum Singapore, Arts House Limited, Asia-Europe Foundation, and international partners such as Arts-ED in Malaysia and Mama Magnet in Amsterdam.
Video Credits: Solo Together, BA (Hons) Arts Management students:
Ethel, Kyla, Elizabeth, Yingge, Naiyu.
Launched by Associate Professor Natalia Grincheva in December 2025, the Culture Futures Lab operates at the intersection of cultural policy, predictive data analytics, and speculative design. Since its inception, the Lab has quickly commanded international attention, successfully hosting site-specific incubators—including its inaugural session at the ANCER Conference in Hong Kong—producing published incubator reports that provide actionable, evidence-based frameworks for the creative economy.
Demonstrating its capacity for high-level executive engagement, the Lab was commissioned to design and facilitate the Decision Making Theatre for the National University of Singapore (NUS) Executive Leadership Programme, providing leaders with immersive, scenario-driven strategic forecasting tools. Looking ahead, the Culture Futures Lab is set to deepen its regional policy impact through an upcoming collaboration with Singapore’s National Arts Council (NAC) and National Youth Council (NYC), establishing youth panels to co-create and prototype participatory scenarios for the future of Singapore as a creative city.