I am Senior Researcher School of Design at The Glasgow School of Art.

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

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).

RESEARCH

My research operates at the interface between design, health and care practice, and people’s experience of products and services, using an evidence-based approach. My role has been both as principal- and co-investigator within multidisciplinary research teams, integrating design approaches into the overarching research methodologies. My expertise is in adopting participative co-design and visualisation approaches to bring together the different research disciplines and stakeholders, advocating the use of mixed methods to develop, iteratively prototype and evaluate interventions. My portfolio has covered programmes of research concerned with, e.g., stroke rehabilitation, ageing, hospital nutrition, end-of-life care, and infection prevention and control, funded through competitive proposals to UKRI, NHS and charitable trusts.

I have been invited to join advisory groups for research networks and to provide keynotes, guest lectures and workshops in the UK, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore and Japan. I 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.

I was a member of the UK Antimicrobial Resistance Cross-Council Initiative Steering Group Member, 2017-18, and an Expert Review Panel Member for the Medical Research Council’s Medical Research Foundation’s National PhD Training Programme in Antimicrobial Resistance 2016-17.

http://amrsim.org
http://visionon.org/vo

PEDAGOGY / ACADEMIC PROGRAMME DEVELOPMENT / TRAINING

I am 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. In 1995-1996 I helped establish the PDE programme 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., an annual series of inclusive design courses for the Ritsumeikan University, Japan, an inclusive design workshop for the Building and Construction Authority Academy, Singapore; and design courses and workshops for the Groningen Hanzehogeschule Faculteit Techniek; 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.

ADVISORY

I 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 of The Scottish Government.

STUDY TOURS

2007-2010: Inclusive approaches to healthcare provision for ageing and disabled populations (Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Butterfield Award)
2004: Japanese Inclusive Design (Japan Foundation Research Fellowship)
1993: German product design programmes (ERASMUS award)
1991: Netherlands Design (Scottish Development Agency Award)
1990: US and Canadian industrial design programmes (Fraser Foundation award)
1990: Czechoslovak Design (British Council award)

CURATION

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