The Empire Café encourages conversations about history, land ownership, ecology and the ongoing effects of Empire through cross-cultural events, writing, visual arts, public discussion, sound-based works and more.
About Louise Welsh
Louise Welsh is co-director of The Empire Café with Jude Barber. She works in several forms including novels, short stories, opera libretti, radio, performance and sound art.
Louise has written eleven novels, most recently The Cut Up (Canongate Books 2026). Louise is editor of Yonder Awa, a poetry anthology on the theme of Scotland and the North Atlantic slave trade by Scottish and Caribbean writers and ‘Ghost, One Hundred Stories to Read with the Lights On’.
Louise has collaborated on four critically acclaimed operas with composer Stuart MacRae. She has received several awards and international fellowships, including an honorary fellowship from the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and honorary doctorates from the Open University and Edinburgh Napier University. Louise is a member of the Citizens Theatre Board and Honorary President of Scottish PEN. She was University of Otago Scottish Writers’ Fellow, New Zealand (2016). Louise is Professor of Creative Writing at University of Glasgow. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of Literature.
About Jude Barber
Jude Barber is co-director of The Empire Café with Louise Welsh. Jude is an architect, director and urbanist at Collective Architecture. The studio is 100% employee-owned, founded on principles of creativity, equity and social responsibility. Together, the Collective team has delivered key projects around the UK that include The Glasgow Women’s Library, Paisley Library and The City Observatory Calton Hill, Edinburgh.
Jude also has specific expertise in urbanism and blue-green infrastructure having co-developed strategic plans and developments at Granton Waterfront in Edinburgh, Kirkcaldy in Fife and Water Row in Govan, on the banks of Glasgow’s River Clyde.
In parallel with her studio practice at Collective, Jude undertakes creative collaborations. This includes Voices of Experience, with Suzanne Ewing and Nicola McLachlan, which investigates women who have made important contributions to architecture and the built environment.
Jude is a visiting tutor at the University of Sheffield, an Academician (Elect) of the RSA, and a fellow of The Academy of Urbanism and The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE).
Steering Group
The Empire Café is supported by a Steering Group consisting of Councillor Graham Campbell, artist Graham Fagen and planner Caitlin Arbuckle Macleod.