Research

ImaginationLancaster works across traditional university boundaries, linking disciplines to address complex contemporary challenges and opportunities, such as climate change, urban density and housing for all, an increasingly ageing society, education for the knowledge society, inequalities in wealth within and across countries and continents, the risk of infectious disease, and rapid technological change.

We conduct applied and theoretical research into products, places, services and technologies, using innovative strategies that combine science and social science methods with the practice-based methods arising from the arts, engineering and design.

There are opportunities for PhD research in these areas.

Currently, our main research and design activities cut across a number of areas:

Democratising Innovation

Innovation and design are not actions limited to professional designers. Radical innovation is more likely to happen across disciplines rather than within them. There is a need to develop new design processes that facilitate and exploite the creative potential of all people.

Design for Sustainability

Design for Sustainability covers a broad range of interrelated research interests - from large scale environments and urban planning to architecture and product design. We focus on design-centred research and the visualization of sustainable directions and solutions.

Design Futures

Designers envision the future as an intrinsic part of the design process and create visions that are tangible and generate insights into the future needs of consumers.

Design Management

Design has a central role innovation and creativity. It is increasingly important as a contributor to organisational growth both in the public and in the private sector. As such, the knowledge and skills in leading design thinking in organisations is a valuable asset across all industry sectors.

Digital Economy

Our research on digital economies investigates practices of exchange that are emerging around the capabilities of social, pervasive and mobile technologies. We explore the potential for new services, new forms of exchange and interaction that benefit the whole of the UK economy.

Service Design

Service Design is a growing area both in design research and design practice. We are working on research projects to develop Service Design discipline in connection with practitioners, and in relation to contemporary issues such as Sustainability, Digital Economy and Public Services reform.

Social Technologies

Social Technologies is an emerging field concerned with the social impact of network technologies and the ways in which people collaborate to make or use technology. One focus is on the proliferation of social technologies in urban spaces and the changing nature of the city.