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Dr Louise Mullagh

Lecturer in Arts Management

design for place-based policy, designing future policies for emerging technologies, strategic design, design and governance, knowledge curation

Expertise

  • Design Futures
  • Design Management
  • Service Design
  • Socially Responsible Design

Louise’s research explores how we can use design to address complex place-based approaches to policy making and governance across a range of local and global challenges, including environmental change, emerging technologies and public health (including post-COVID recovery). Through the use of design, including speculative and design fiction, prototyping and creative /community place-based methods, her work explores ways in which we can both use ‘futures’, and understand ‘pasts’ to navigate these complex challenges with policymakers and stakeholders (including more-than-human) to design policy and governance solutions and interventions.

One of Louise’s current research projects, in collaboration with Dr Serena Pollastri, will explore how we might understand current and design future, equitable policies for living in coastal areas. This research is the initial phase of a larger project which will seek to understand what place-based policy is and could be, and to develop guides and tools to enable both stakeholders, communities and public policy makers to design more equitable policy futures. As we experience profound environmental changes, the coast of the UK and those who live and work there (including more-than-human inhabitants) face significant challenges. Rising tides and increasing coastal erosion are leading to a need for rapid policy changes that might balance the needs of the communities who live there and wider public policy. This work will take case studies of communities who are dealing with imminent flooding and erosion threats, in order to understand the decision making processes across organisations and the types of impact and influence forms evidence in these examples. By understanding this particular context, we intend to begin developing a framework for designing place-based policies that can be used across a wide range of public policy areas.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Louise carried out research that explored design for recovery and resilience. Her four part framework of reaction, adaptation, recovery and resilience led to her co-editing a book “Design through COVID-19: From reaction to resilience” with Professor Rachel Cooper, which is due to be published by Bloomsbury in October 2023.

Perviously, Louise’s research has explored how design can be used to enable sustainability practices in small maker enterprises in the UK and China (Living Design, Located Making, Design Ecologies) and how we might understand place through the gathering of ‘More-than-Data’ through designing walks.

Louise is currently Chair (Research) of the PoGo (Policy and Governance) SIG for the Design Research Society. She also leads the Imagination Design for Policy and Governance special interest group with Dr. Naomi Jacobs. She is also a member of the Place and Space, World Building and More than Human Imagination Special Interest Groups

Louise holds a PhD (EPSRC scholarship) in Digital Innovation (Data Science and Design) from ImaginationLancaster/School of Computing and Communications; MRes in Digital Innovation (ImaginationLancaster/School of Computing and Communications); MA in Museology (Manchester University) and BA (hons) Fine Art (Lancaster University).

Louise Mullagh's full list of publications can be viewed here

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