Claire O’Brien studied BA (Hons) Fine Art (Painting and Printmaking) at the University of East London and graduated in 1997. She worked as an artist exhibiting in the UK and Italy and her artwork has gone into private collections in the UK, USA, Australia and Canada.    After gaining a Post-Graduate Diploma in Arts Management at Northumbria University in 2000 she worked in arts organisations such as North Tyneside Arts, Monster Productions and Seven Stories.  Claire went back to making art and painted carnival masks in Venice, Italy in 2003 before returning to England to study MA Computer Animation at Teesside University in 2005. On graduating she worked as a modeller, texture artist and filmmaker both freelance and for UK Haptics and Jasmine Media. 

 
In 2007 Claire started teaching at Teesside University as a Demonstrator in Drawing and Animation for the Foundation and BA courses before taking a break from full time work to raise her children full-time. Claire resumed work as a Lecturer in Animation at Northumbria University in 2017 and then became Course Leader for all the Art and Design courses at South Tyneside College in 2018. She then returned to Teesside University in 2022 as a Lecturer in Computer Animation and is now working as a Senior  Lecturer in the subject.

Claire is course leader for MA Animation and she lectures on both the MA and BA in the subjects of animation and shortfilm production. Claire is also the Coordinator for Animex Screen, the international student film festival that is part of the annual Animex animation and games festival. 

Animation Studies, Immersive Technologies (AR/VR/MR) for education, healthcare and industrial training, Fulldome 360 filmmaking and Pedagogy

Claire was a participant in XR Stories' XR Accelerator in 2024 to investigate taking her research on Mobile Augmented Reality to entrepreneurship