ABOUT

The third PhD By Design conference was held at University of Sheffield School of Architecture on the 3rd and 4th of April 2017. The conference consisted of discussion sessions, plenary presentations from designers, artists and academics and some provocative activities. 

This year the aim of the conference was to enable the question of who ‘I’ am to be evoked in research, to be brought into focus, exposed and examined, critiqued and debated. We sought to engage with narratives of ‘self’; how the notion of self as a researcher has been assumed and embodied in research.

Our goal was to create an interdisciplinary discussion platform about subjectivity in research by design. We aimed to break the conceived notion of design and redefine it as the process of struggles with the self: confession, realisation, disguise and evolution. Confess your positioning, transformation, ambiguity and ‘yourself’.

Becoming ………… through design.

Researcher,

Machine,

Model,

Woman,

Self,

Keynote speakers included Dr Maria Theodorou (Leeds Beckett University and PolyPolis), Dr Katie Lloyds Thomas (NewCastle University and Co-Director of Architecture Research Collaborative (ARC) and a debate with Professor Doina Petrescu (University of Sheffield and atelier d'architecture autogérée). 

Conference programme

The two day conference brought together design researchers to create a multidisciplinary platform where student where students debated "design" and "research" as combined terms, using each of the term to explore and reflect upon the other alternatively. 

LOCAl organising team