I am Professor of Creative Computing at the Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London. My research explores new approaches to interactive technologies for the Arts and the Creative Industries through Creative Computing. My current focus is on Human-Centred AI and eXplainable AI for the Arts. My £24m research funding portfolio has made audio engineering more accessible and inclusive, championed the design of sustainable and ethical IoT and wearables, and engaged rural and urban communities with physical computing through craft and cultural heritage. Products of my research have been exhibited internationally including Ars Electronica (Austria) the V&A and the Science Museum (UK), made available online and as smartphone apps, used by artists and musicians in performances and art installations, and have been reported in public media outlets including the the BBC and New Scientist.

I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS), and Senior Member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). I am a recipient of the ACM and BCS Recognition of Service Awards, and chaired the ACM Creativity and Cognition conference 2009, 2025, and 2026, and the BCS international HCI conference 2006.

26 of my PhD students have passed. I have examined 23 PhD students.

See more details here: https://nickbknickbk.github.io

Professor Rebecca Earley is a sustainable fashion textile designer and expert in circular economy, based at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London. Her work focuses on developing design strategies for sustainable and circular textiles, encompassing innovative material development, low-impact production processes, creative practice methods, and fostering behaviour change in both designers and users. From 2010 to 2017, she served as the Director of the Textile Futures Research Centre at Central Saint Martins (CSM) and also led projects within the Textiles Environment Design research group at Chelsea (1996–2017). In 2017, she co-founded and directed the Centre for Circular Design (CCD) at Chelsea with Kate Goldsworthy, a role she held until 2022.

After earning her MA in Fashion from CSM in 1994, Becky received several accolades for her innovative print design work, including a New Generation Award at London Fashion Week in 1996. She received funding from the Crafts Council and Arts Council England, and the Prince’s Youth Business Trust.

She began teaching textiles at Chelsea College of Arts in 1996. Her early research, initiated in 1999, focused on design strategies for textiles using recycling and low-impact printing and dyeing techniques. She worked in collaboration with the Eden Project and scientists from Bristol and Exeter Universities with natural indigo (Spindigo Project). Her work was further supported through AHRB awards - 5Ways, Worn Again, and Fire Up. In 2007, she was nominated as a Morgan Stanley Great Briton for her contributions to sustainable fashion textiles, following the curation of the Crafts Council’s 2006 Well Fashioned exhibition. Becky has curated multiple fashion textile exhibitions across London, New York, and Sweden, with her recycled textile works showcased globally. Her pieces are included in major museum collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

Dr. Lorraine Gamman is Professor of Design at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London and Director of the Design Against Crime (DAC) Research Lab, which she founded in 1999. DAC explores how art, design and creative engagement processes can reduce crime in partnership with many stakeholders, including the UK’s Design Council and Home Office; later with MOJ and some UK Prisons. Gamman is regarded as an authority in applied social design practice, is the co-creator of a range of award-winning anti-crime product interventions (including some co designed with prisoners) and has produced design benchmarks that have influenced international design, see: https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins/research-at-csm/design-against-crime.

Gamman has delivered many research projects funded by the AHRC, EPSRC, EU, ECR among other funders and works with artists, designers, policy-makers, crime prevention practitioners, retail, communities, prisons and prisoners, whilst continuing to deliver design education. She also serves on a number of charities including the Empathy Museum and RJ4All, advises the UK’s National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance (NCJAA)’s Research Committee, and is the author of books, journal articles, chapters and reports on how creative and restorative processes can reduce crime and deliver different forms of crime prevention and justice.

@LorraineGamman
@designagainst
@ResearchUAL
@UAL DESIS Lab

Background

Lorraine Gamman gained a first class BA (Hons) Degree in Cultural Studies from Middlesex University (1984), followed by an MA in Women’s Studies (1987) from the University of Kent. Her early studies led to the co-edited book The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, The Women’s Press, (1988, 1991, 1992), and later the co-authored work Female Fetishism: A New Look, Lawrence & Wishart (1994).

Gamman’s PhD at Middlesex University completed in 1999 explores the role of gender mythologies in perceptions of shoplifting and marked the start of her research focus on crime. Gone Shopping: the Story of Shirley Pitts Queen of Thieves was published by Penguin Books (1996) - a spinoff from the oral history gathered for her PhD and first presented Gamman’s fascination with lived experience of crime and also with criminal perpetrator techniques. It was reprinted in 2012 by Bloomsbury, with an extensive new afterword about the links between shoplifting and poor design.

Gamman worked as freelance sub-editor with The Women’s Press, and after completing her MA, she began teaching design in the UK at Goldsmiths University and Middlesex Polytechnic. She joined Central Saint Martins, UAL as a freelance Associate Lecturer in 1989 where she became Contextual Design Studies Lead tutor for CSM’s product and industrial design courses in 1991; subsequently setting up Design Against Crime as a research focus in 1999. Later she taught as a Visiting International Scholar at University of Technology Sydney; National Institute of Design, India (NID) and at numerous European design schools connected to the international DESIS (Design for Innovation and Sustainability) Network. She is a coordinating committee member of UAL DESIS, see here: https://www.arts.ac.uk/research/groups-networks-and-collaborations/ual-desis-lab.

Career highlights

Gamman is a leading authority in applied social design practice through her pioneering work at UAL with the Design Against Crime Research Lab and through her leadership in responsive design methods (Gamman & Thorpe 2006, 2011, 2016, 2018).

Award-winning anti-crime innovations include Stop Thief chairs, Karrysafe bags, caMden bike stands, ATM mats and Makeright anti-theft bags. Effectively interpreting and addressing offender techniques, these products are regarded as social design benchmarks – some purchased by Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) New York for their permanent collection. Outside of the UK, Gamman has advised on the setting up of UTS’s (University Technology Sydney) Designing Out Crime Research Centre and has been funded to brief criminal justice practitioners about designing against crime at Seoul’s Design Academy.

 
Since 2019 Gamman has been working with ECR Retail Loss on anti shop theft leading to collaborative research reports and action research projects (Gamman et al: 2020. 2023 & 2026). Since 2015 Gamman has also led collaborative action-research design projects that aim to build empathy and resilience in prisoners, encouraging them through creative engagement to see themselves differently. She has co-written up how creative processes help prisoners rehabilitate and use restorative understandings to move towards non-criminal identities (Gamman et al 2015; 2016; 2018; 2019; 2022; 2024; 2025).

Between (2016-2018) on the Makeright project she co designed anti-theft bags against crime with prisoners; alongside diverse research collaborators including outside the UK with Praveen Nahar and students from NID; also with lead researchers from South Denmark University (Thomas Markkusen and Eva Knutz) she has collaborated on co designing games with prisoners.

Collaboration and co-research

Lorraine Gamman’s most recent exhibition of collaborative outputs Making Time – Every Prison a Creative Hub (2024) can be found here: https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins/research-at-csm/design-against-crime/crime-and-justice/making-time-every-prison-a-creative-hub.

Gamman has previously co-led and co-curated over 20 national and international exhibitions and has written over 60 collaborative academic design papers and a number of books including Tricky Design: The Ethics of Things, Bloomsbury 2019 and forthcoming Redesigning Creative Justice, Palgrave, 2027. Since 2022 Lorraine Gamman has been collaborating with UK Prisons HM Pentonville and HMP Isis (before that she was also working with HMP Thameside and HMP Standford Hill) to deliver creative education, and to involve diverse creative practitioners and businesses in such engagements.

Between 2002-2015 Gamman was Vice-Chair of the UK Designing Out Crime Association, organising event and sharing her knowledge with crime prevention practitioners and police officers. From 2007 to 2011 Gamman was a member of the Home Office/Design Council’s ‘Design Technology Alliance’. She advised on a national strategy for Royal Society of Arts and Audi Foundation and created briefs encouraging designers to address real world design justice issues. She has also worked with the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London, where she part of a team that co-developed significant research funded projects and design outputs.

At Central Saint Martins, Gamman has been involved teaching undergraduate and post graduate Ceramic, Industrial and Product students for over 3 decades; building user and participatory design methods into student projects with local communities. She has also delivered and continues to deliver externally funded Design Against Crime client collaborations, research engagements and design outputs aimed at reducing crime.

I am currently Project Manager within Research Management and Administration (RMA), working as part of the Research Environment Team. Our focus is on cultivating a supportive research culture and environment at UAL, and contributing to the university’s Reseach Excellence Franework (REF) submission. My particular area of interest is helping researchers to present and communicate their work through online channels, and I’m also an active member of the Research Impact Community of Practice. I really enjoy working colleaboratively with researchers and helping to promote the real-world relevance of the outstanding research taking place at UAL.

Over the years, I’ve held roles across the higher education and non-profit sectors, leading a wide range of initiatives - from strategic planning, financial management, and service optimisation to high-profile events, policy engagement, and partnership development. I’ve had the privilege of managing talented teams, delivering flagship initiatives such as the Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Scholarships at the University of Oxford, and fostering international collaborations like the Dahrendorf Forum between LSE and the Hertie School, Berlin.

Alongside my work at UAL, I serve as Managing Director of the Urban Design Group, a charitable membership organisation dedicated to improving the quality of design - and in turn, the quality of life - in our cities, towns, and neighbourhoods. In this role, I’m responsible for governance, strategic direction, and raising the organisation’s public profile. As a passionate urbanist, I enjoy using my enegies to support the professionals working in this field and contributing to a cause I deeply believe in.

Dr Francesco Mazzarella is a design researcher, educator, and activist, striving to plant seeds of hope and change, especially working with marginalised communities. He is Reader in Design for Social Change, at London College of Fashion (LCF). His work at Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) aims at exploring ways in which design activism can be used to create counter-narratives towards sustainability, in and through fashion. Francesco's research spans the fields of design activism, textile craftsmanship, decolonising fashion, design for sustainability, social innovation, and place-making.

Francesco has experience in design research, education, and practice in the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam and Australia. He is a member of the Design Council Expert Network, Fellow of Advance HE, Co-founder of the DESIS Cluster on 'Design from the Margins' and of the Cumulus Working Group on 'Design Education for Social Change'. Francesco's work has been presented at international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.

Previously, Francesco was AHRC Design Leadership Fellow Research Associate at ImaginationLancaster, with the aim to support design research for change. Francesco was the first researcher to be awarded a PhD from the AHRC Design Star CDT at Loughborough Design School in 2018. His doctoral research project explored how service design can be used to activate textile artisan communities to transition towards a sustainable future. Francesco was awarded a BSc in Industrial Design (Product Design) and an MSc in Ecodesign, both from the Politecnico di Torino in Italy. He has also been an exchange student at the University of Twente (the Netherlands) and at the Minas Gerais State University (Brazil).