Heather Barnett is an artist, researcher and educator working with natural phenomena and complex systems. Working with live organisms, imaging technologies and playful pedagogies, her work explores how we observe, influence and understand multi-species ecosystems. Recent work centers around nonhuman intelligence, collective behavior and distributed knowledge systems, including The Physarum Experiments, an ongoing "collaboration" with an intelligent slime mold; Animal Collectives collaborative research with SHOAL Group at Swansea University where she is an Honorary Research Fellow; and a series of publicly sited collective bio/social experiments exploring network mechanisms across species and scales. Barnett is Pathway Leader on the MA Art and Science and Convenor of the Art and Living Systems Lab at Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London), UK, a Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellow, and chairs London LASER, a regular talks series on the intersections of art and science.

Barnett has held Research Fellowships at the University of Sussex and the London School of Economics, and consulted on arts, health and science projects for organisations such as the Wellcome Trust, the Science Museum, and Willis Newson. As Artist in Residence, Barnett has worked in diverse settings including The Swarm Lab, Infoterra Remote Sensing and Poole Hospital Pathology Deptatment. She has exhibited widely in art galleries, science museums and public venues, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Science Museum, Wellcome Collection (London), the Pompidou Centre (Paris), the New Institute (Rotterdam), and Observatory (New York). Commissions include the Postgraduate Medical Institute (Anglia Ruskin University), Flow (Guy’s Hospital Cancer Day Unit), Small Worlds (The Museum of the History of Science, Oxford University) and The Other Flower Show (Victoria and Albert Museum).