Team

Prof. Rebecca Cain is Associate Dean for Enterprise and Professor of Transdisciplinary Design in Loughborough Design School. Rebecca’s expertise is in trans-disciplinary design research – bringing together industry with academia to create and lead diverse multi-disciplinary design research teams across the healthcare, automotive, mobility, rail and energy sectors.  Her personal research funding comes from the EPSRC, Innovate UK, the AHRC and through industry contracts.

Dr Lee Bosher is a Professor of Disaster Risk Management (DRM). Lee’s research investigates the multi-disciplinary integration of proactive risk reduction strategies into the decision-making processes of key stakeholders, involved with the planning, design, (re)construction and operation of the built environment. Lee is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and has been involved in research projects that investigated DRM in the UK, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and across Europe. Lee’s books include ‘Disaster Risk Reduction for the Built Environment’ (with Ksenia Chmutina 2017, Wiley) and ‘Hazards and the Built Environment’ (2008, Routledge).  

Dr Ksenia Chmutina is Senior Lecturer in Sustainable and Resilience Urbanism and Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion for the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering. Ksenia is a critical disaster scholar researching the processes of disaster risk creation and systemic implications of sustainability and resilience under the pressures of urbanisation and climate change in the context of neoliberalism. Her research mainly comprises location-based case studies and systemic policy analysis; it brings together qualitative research and participatory methodologies to generate transdisciplinary understanding of disasters as socio-political processes. Ksenia uses her work to draw attention to the fact that disasters are not natural.

Dr Stuart Cockbill is a Lecturer in Design at Loughborough University School of Design and Creative Arts. Stuart has a background in Product Design (MDes), Inclusive Design (MSc) and creative design research methods (Ph.D.) and has a broad range of research and design expertise, gained throughout studies and industry experience working for a number of small design consultancies and as a freelance designer. Stuart has worked on a range of projects bringing a human centred focus to technology development and data-driven services, most often in the energy demand reduction context. His core research interests are in developing and applying creative design research methods to enable user engagement within experience design-driven processes, and applying these methods to different domains, with an emphasis on developing future services.

Prof. Vicky Haines Prof. Vicky Haines co-leads the Design for Future Living Lab in the School of Design & Creative Arts. She is a Professor in User Centred Design and is Associate Dean (Research) within the School. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, a Registered European Ergonomist and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Vicky has worked extensively on projects with commercial and industrial partners as well as other academics, focusing on user centred design and energy. Her research focuses on how people interact with their environment and the products and services they use, particularly in the domestic energy field. 

Dr Ksenija Kuzmina is a Programme Director and Lecturer for the MA/MSc Design Innovation programme within the Institute for Design Innovation, Loughborough University in London. Ksenija’s research is in the field of design and service innovation for environmentally friendly and socially viable futures. She is interested in exploring design’s capability to support change in service organisations at the intersection of public, private and third sectors. In particular, her research looks at how service design thinking, human-centered design, and more recently, big data methodologies can be strategically integrated to enable organisations to review, reflect on and reimagine new service models to promote social innovation, well-being and sustainability.

Dr Antonia Liguori is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Storytelling at Loughborough University. Her academic background is in History and Computer Science. Since 2008, she has been involved in a variety of international research projects to develop tools and methods to foster innovation in education; to explore the role of storytelling in today’s digital world; to investigate and trial ways of using digital storytelling as a participatory methodology for inter-disciplinary research.  Over the past five years her research has been focusing on three main strands: applied storytelling on environmental issues; digital storytelling in (cultural/heritage) education; storytelling and urban design. More recently, after having joined HEART – Healing Education Animation Research Therapy, she has been exploring digital storytelling as therapeutic intervention. 

Dr Val Mitchell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Design and Creative Arts and Programme Director for the User Experience Design MA. She has over 20 years interdisciplinary research experience specialising in the development of Human Centred Design (HCD) methodologies, methods and tools. She specialises in methodological research at the intersection of disciplines and the development of creative co-design tools and methods for designing future technologies and services. She is currently undertaking a part time secondment with the Service Design agency Snook, a leading UK design agency based in London and Glasgow https://wearesnook.com.

Dr Falli Palaiologou is a Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Studies at Loughborough University. Her background is in architecture and her research focuses on the urban design and city scales. Her primary research domain is urban morphology, the study of urban form, through analytical approaches using spatial and empirical data. She is an expert in space syntax methodologies, having spent seven years in the UCL Space Syntax Laboratory for her doctoral and post-doctoral research, funded by EPSRC. She conducts research on sustainable urban transformations, focusing on urban housing, urban streets and sidewalks, street liveability and temporary urbanism.

Prof. Michael Wilson is Professor of Drama and Head of Creative Arts at Loughborough University. He joined Loughborough in September 2014 as Professor of Drama, having previously been Dean of Research and the Graduate School and Professor of Drama at Falmouth University. Before that he was Head of Research at the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries, University of Glamorgan, where he also ran two research centres. He is a member of the Programme Advisory Boards for the RCUK’s programme on the Digital Economy (led by EPSRC) and the AHRC’s programmes on Digital Transformations and Connected Communities. He is also a member of the AHRC Strategic Reviewers Group and Chair the British Council’s Arts and Humanities Panel for the Researcher Links and Institutional Links Programme (Newton Fund) .

Research Students

The HOME Research Student Team (Left to Right: Sara Christou, Valentina Volpi, Dave Angel, Holly Turpin, Robert Gaukroger)

Sara Christou – Homely HOME

Since 2008 Sara has worked extensively in the charity sector, specialising in international development. Most recently, as Director of Think Aloud Consulting, she provides expert fundraising advice to multiple non-profit organisations. She is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising (MCIOF), and in 2020, she was appointed to the Board of the Young Women’s Trust. Prior to this, Sara was selected for a secondment in the Cabinet Office as a Senior Policy Advisor, to manage an £80 million fund to tackle complex social issues. She attained a Master of Science (MSc) in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford, and graduated with a BA Hons in Theological and Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge. This PhD will combine Sara’s academic skills, professional expertise and humanitarian focus, to contribute impactful new research at Loughborough University.   

Valentina Volpi – Transient HOME

Valentina is an Italian free-hand illustrator, architect, and political enthusiast based in London. During her Master Degree in Architecture (University of Ferrara), she focused on how citizens could participate in the design process through their visions and artistic perceptions of the surrounding spaces, to guide planning policies towards a deeper understanding of human geography and urban landscape. Deepening the concept of how art and design were expressions of distinctive cultures, in 2016 she moved to London and undertook a MA in Fine and Decorative Art (Sotheby’s Institute), comparing English and Italian traditions and gendered interiors. However, once settled in London, her focus shifted from the art world to political activism, asking again how citizens could directly shape a more intersectional and inclusive city, and she started volunteering for the social inclusion of BAME women, homeless and migrants. Her current trans-disciplinary PhD at Loughborough University is converging on these experiences, academic background, and beliefs in political solidarity and urban activism. Focusing on self-determined spaces in abandoned buildings, which are ensuring many migrant homeless find transient homes and contribute to the local community, her thesis will combine approaches from service design, creative arts, urban theories and storytelling to understand (and hopefully change) the experience and social stigma around of migrant homelessness and squatters.

Dave Angel – Reconstructing HOME

Dave has had a varied career path, having been a professional musician, FE and HE lecturer, schoolteacher, community arts worker and TESOL tutor.  In recent years, he has developed and coordinated a wide range of community-based projects in South Yorkshire, focusing on oral history and community engagement, the most prominent example being the HLF publication, The Working Men’s Clubs of Doncaster: The Community Centres of the Working Class.  Dave is specifically interested in engaging marginalised people in connecting with their own heritage and identity, and in developing non-elite narratives. He believes that his background of academic work and in-the-field experience will produce a unique and exciting contribution to the HOME project. Dave has an MA in Local History (Sheffield Hallam University), his dissertation being an in-depth oral history study of the Women Against Pit Closures movement.  He also has a first-class BMus degree (University of Sheffield).

Holly Turpin – Loss of HOME

Holly’s background spans both arts and academic contexts, combining her interest in community outreach and media arts. In 2019 she completed a MA in Arts, Enterprise & Development at the University of Warwick, where she researched art entrepreneurial capability, filmmaking for social change and the ethics of culture for development. After this she went to on to work as a Research Assistant at the Centre of Postdigital Cultures, part of Coventry University, focussing on research into Immersive Culture and Heritage. Previously, she worked in arts engagement, for regional arts organisations The Hearth Centre in Birmingham and The Brewhouse Arts Centre in Burton on Trent. Before this Holly coordinated community cinema initiatives, as an Engagement Coordinator for Animate Projects, and with national and regional partners at Cinema For All, the national support and development organisation for community-led cinema. Holly’s current research focusses on empathetic and immersive digital storytelling, and how this can be co-created within different homelessness contexts to communicate the loss of home.

Robert Gaukroger – TBC

Being the first in my family to go to university in the mid 1990’s, I chose to study Architecture. I have realised by watching people that the architect and urban planner is in everyone; ingenious squatters and rough sleepers who are usually punished for their creativity are city makers. For my MArch project ‘the museum of homelessness’ – an urban intensification, I did not seek to take the homeless from the street, instead giving the streets to them to create safety and a place to make home. My research is based on personal experience. I see homelessness as a place in time we all move towards and away from in our lives; I am looking at how to rethink this place some of us reach.