Winner of the 'Best Research' category of the inaugural 2018 AHRC / Wellcome Health Humanities Medal Awards.

Named as a Key Change Maker and Thought Leader in the British Council’s Design for Disability and an Ageing Society: a Review of the State of Play in the UK (UsCreates).

Senior Researcher School of Design at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA).

With a thirty-plus-year career in practice and higher education I have developed two distinct portfolios, in research and in pedagogy and academic programme development. In addition, I operate in advisory, consultancy and professional capacities in both areas.

Research:
I currently head a small team of researchers and doctoral students with a focus on design research for ageing, health and care operating at the interface between design, health and care practice, and people’s experience of products and services, using an evidence-based approach. I act as both principal- and co-investigator within multidisciplinary research teams, integrating design approaches into the overarching research methodologies. My portfolio has covered research concerning spinal cord injury, stroke rehabilitation, hospital nutrition, end-of-life care, and hospital associated infections. This is funded through competitive proposals to UKRI, NHS and charitable trusts. My expertise is in adopting principally participative co-design and visualisation approaches to bring together the different research disciplines and stakeholders, advocating the use of mixed methods to develop, prototype and evaluate interventions. I have been invited to join advisory groups for research networks in the UK and Sweden, and to provide keynote and guest lectures in Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and Japan. I am called on to peer review journal articles and conference papers, and research applications both by research councils in the UK and internationally, and supervise and examine PhDs at home and internationally.

Pedagogy / academic programme development / training:
A product designer by training and part of the founding team for GSA’s award-winning MEng/BEng Product Design Engineering (PDE) programme, I was lecturer then senior lecturer in the PDE department from 1989 before becoming its Head of Department from 1996-2006. I helped establish the PDE programme in 1995-1996 at The Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, based on the Glasgow PDE model and have advised a number of other institutions developing similar programmes, including Groningen in the Netherlands, Kingston and Dundee universities. I have designed and delivered specialist intensive programmes and workshops for e.g., the Ritsumeikan University, Japan; Groningen Hanzehogeschule Faculteit Techniek; the Building and Construction Authority Academy, Singapore; and the Fachhochschule Trier, Germany. I have been external examiner for academic design programmes at both undergraduate and graduate level at the University of Dundee, the Royal College of Art, Loughborough University, and Sheffield Hallam University. I have been an advisory capacity and have been an advisor to the UK’s Royal College of Art, The Royal Society of Arts, the Design Council; and the Policy Planning and Architecture Division, The Scottish Government.

I have also recently embarked on curation, exploring the historical contribution made in Glasgow to the development of medical obstetrics ultrasound.
https://vimeo.com/303013461