Claire van Rhyn is a design researcher and educationalist with a distinctly interdisciplinary approach. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, funded by the AHRC’s London Doctoral Design Centre. Her work investigates the body as modality of communication. Through employing an expanded practice of communication and experience design – influenced by choreographic thinking and awareness-based approaches – her work develops collaborative improvisational methods for exploring processes of social change and cultural transition within communities.
Her research is particularly focused on educational futures and change-making in compulsory school settings. Claire holds a MSc in Education Research with distinction from University of Exeter. As learning experience designer, she has worked with numerous school communities through consultation, workshops, as well as in-service and pre-service teacher training. She has researched social cognition in schools with Universities of Cambridge, Exeter and Roehampton.
Claire is a member of the Social Presencing Theatre research group, based at the Presencing Institute (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Design Research Society. As Assistant Director for Shambhala Art Europe, she teaches and hosts workshops internationally on the subject of perception, embodiment and mindful-aware approaches to creativity. Claire’s early professional background is in Art Directing and Publishing Design.