I am Professor of Design at Central Saint Martins and the Director of the award-winning Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC), which I founded in 1999. I am regarded as an expert in the way I have addressed social issues through actual design practice by interpreting offender techniques and delivering design against crime interventions.
During the last fourteen years, as well as delivering research, papers and outputs funded by various research councils, I have been able to co-create several national design challenge competition briefs for the Design Council, the Royal Society of Arts and also the Audi Design Foundation. Additionally, in partnership with designers from the school of Communication, Product and Spatial Design at Central Saint Martins, I have catalysed several anti-crime product ranges.
My work contextualises crime issues through the lens of design. It does this by asking what society needs more of as well as what it needs less of (e.g. crime), whilst also making the case that ‘secure design should not look criminal’.
I have always had an interest in design, gender and visual culture and this came to the fore when teaching contextual studies primarily to product, graphic, ceramic, innovation and industrial design students for over twenty-five years at Middlesex, Goldsmiths and Central Saint Martins. I have written numerous books and articles that discuss the significance of design, gender and representation on diverse topics.
Particular research interests include:
- Social issues applied via design including strong account of Design Methods and Design Process
- Participatory design
- Socially Responsive Design and design agitation and intervention.
Other broad interests:
- Creativity (particularly the dark side)
- Democracy and Agonistic Design
- Intervention in particular as impacts on graffiti;
- Design Against Shoplifting;
- Design Against ATM Crime;
- Issue raised by social issues;
- Visual Culture;
- Empathy, Restorative Justice
- DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) as well as “desistance”, how it relates to prison education.