Dr Sam Mejias is Provost of London College of Communication and Executive Dean of Impact and Innovation at University of the Arts London. He took up his post in September 2026.
Sam holds a PhD from University College London Institute of Education, an MA from Columbia University Teachers College, and a BA from the College of William and Mary.
Sam has significant pedagogical, scholarly and leadership experience over a 25-year career in education across disciplines including arts, design, sound and music, media and communications, human rights, and international development. He was previously Dean of the School of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons School of Design in New York City, and has been a co-Principal Investigator for international multi-university research grants from the National Science Foundation, Wellcome Trust and the Wallace Foundation. Most recently, he served on the board of directors of the Jacob Riis Settlement House in Queens, New York.
As an academic researcher, Sam’s work focuses on the influence of arts education in bridging learning gaps, and on how social justice and civic engagement concepts circulate and instantiate in design, discourse, and communication practices. He has collaborated on research projects exploring how arts, science and technology-led transdisciplinary practices can lead to more equitable learning outcomes, and how community-based arts programmes influence young people’s life and career trajectories. He has also worked on research projects exploring youth citizenship practices in Europe and the United States. Results from these studies have been published in Information, Communication and Society, Leonardo, Educational Researcher, Science Education, European Journal of Developmental Psychology, and the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. A multi-instrumentalist and sound designer, Sam’s creative practice in sound art currently focuses on the sonification of social and political discourse across digital platforms.
In addition to his experience in higher education at Parsons and The New School, Sam was a Research Fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science’s Media and Communications department. Prior to pursuing an academic career, he was an international development research consultant for BBC Media Action, USAID, UNICEF and the Economist, and a consultant on citizenship and human rights projects for the European Commission, UCL and Amnesty International.