Contributors
Grant Gregson is the Coordinator of Emily Carr University’s Teaching and Learning Centre administering and teaching Emily Carr’s e-learning platforms, Moodle, WordPress Blogs and Wiki. Grant’s research supports faculty and staff with incorporating new technologies for use in online learning, the classroom, research projects and web publishing, together with scholarly and pedagogical practices. Grant directs Emily Carr University Production Services (ECUPS), a student media team providing filming, publishing and web-casting of events and lectures at Emily Carr. Grant serves on the Curriculum Planning + Review Committee (CPR), on the Pedagogy, eLearning and Technology Committee (PET), on the British Columbia Teaching & Learning Council (BC-TLC) and on BC’s ETUG Steering Committee (SCETUG).
Glen Lowry has a PhD in Literary Studies and has published widely on contemporary Canadian Literature and Culture — literature, photography, film, and television. His recent work investigates new forms of cultural expression and social contexts, particularly around questions of globalization and urbanization. Lowry’s work focuses on new media platforms that link scholars, artists, and audiences across cultural and geographical distances: e.g, Maraya project, connecting urban waterfronts in Vancouver and Dubai. From 2002–11, Lowry edited the cultural journal West Coast Line. Pacific Avenue (2009), his collection of poems, looks at image-based memory and geography. Lowry regularly shares ideas, images, lectures, and commentary on his blog.
Celeste Martin is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr. She has a background in communication design and specializes in typography and publication design. She has a BFA and MFA from the University of Iowa. Her creative work examines the forms of written language, the shapes of letters and structures of text and their relationship to space. She is the editor of Current, the university’s design research journal, and a member of Emily Carr’s Research Ethics Board. Her current design research focuses on the development of enhanced interactive ebooks and the categorization of emerging formal structures in book design for touch-based mobile devices.
Deborah Shackleton is the Dean of Design and Dynamic Media and an Associate Professor who teaches design research and methods in the MDes program. Deborah’s research and teaching interests include design theory, human-centred designing, and learning theory for design development. In addition to her administrative role and teaching practice Deborah is a published designer, writer and photographer whose work has been recognized nationally and internationally. She is one of the founding editors of the award-winning Current (http://current.ecuad.ca) the University’s design research journal, the founding Chair of the ECU Research Ethics Board, and a certified member of the Society of Graphic Designers.
Bonne Zabolotney is the Vice President, Academic + Provost at Emily Carr University. She has worked as a communication designer in Vancouver since 1993, working with a wide range of clients, locally and nationally. Her most notable work can be found in the philatelic section of Canada’s National Archives which includes her 1999 stamp design recognizing the formation of the Nunavut territory. Five more of her stamp designs are also in the National Archives. She has also worked with some of the largest arts groups in Vancouver including Vancouver Opera, Vancouver Recital Society, and Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Areas of learning and teaching include fairy tales and story-telling, typography, print design, design and material culture, and the visual vernacular.
Keith Doyle is an Assistant Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. He is a lead/co-lead Investigator on a few Emily Carr research initiatives including, the SSHRC Insight cloTHING(s) as conversation project and is a founding faculty member and the current Co-Director of Material Matters, a pragmatic material research centre within the Intersections Digital Studios at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Material Matters’ mandate is to explore sustainable yet innovative material practice through industry outreach and partnerships, social forums and workshops for knowledge transfer. Keith holds both a BFA and an MFA in Sculpture. He maintains an active material practice exhibiting locally and abroad.
Hélène Day Fraser’s textile and garment-based work addresses concerns and developments in the areas of: sustainability, new digital technologies, craft and legacy practices of making, and generative systems. Her research consistently explores modes of social engagement, identity construction and clothing consumption habits. It is informed by a design education, and a past professional career in fashion, design, and manufacturing. Hélène is an Associate Professor At Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She is the lead investigator of the cloTHING(s) as Conversation research initiative, co-founder of the Material Matters research center and the Lab Manager for Emily Carr’s DESIS lab.
Louise St. Pierre is Associate Professor of Design at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada. She is co-author of the internationally recognized Okala Practitioner: Learning Ecological Design and is the founder and coordinator of Emily Carr’s DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Lab. She has received awards and funding for Industrial Design, Exhibit Design and Ecological Design work from organizations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Industrial Designer’s Society of America, and The American Center for Design. St. Pierre continues to publish and lecture internationally on sustainable and ecological design with a focus on how design can embrace our interdependence with nature’s systems.
Dr. Garnet Hertz is Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts and is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Design and Dynamic Media at Emily Carr. His research explores DIY culture, electronic art and critical design practices. He holds a PhD from the University of California Irvine and has exhibited his studio work in seventeen countries including SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, and DEAF. His research is widely cited in academic publications, and popular press on his work has disseminated through 25 countries including The New York Times, Wired, The Washington Post, NPR, USA Today, NBC, CBS, TV Tokyo and CNN Headline News.
Other Contributors
Kate Fletcher’s work is both rooted in nature’s principles and engaged with the cultural and creative forces of fashion and design. Over the last two decades, her original thinking and progressive outlook has infused the field of fashion, textiles and sustainability with design thinking, and come to define it. Kate has over 50 scholarly and popular publications in the field. Among other books, she is author of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys (2014, 2008), which is in active use in commercial design studios and is the principal text in academic seminar rooms around the world and of a pioneering new text Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion (2016). Kate is Professor of Sustainability, Design, Fashion at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London where she has a broad remit spanning enterprise, education and research. Her strategic leadership permeates the Centre’s activities, including its role as co-secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion at the House of Lords.
Lisa H. Grocott is a Professor of Design and head of department at Monash University, Australia and Director of THRVNG a co-design research lab. Before recently returning to Melbourne Lisa spent the past 12 years at Parsons School of Design in New York. Half of that time she was the dean of academic initiatives and the past six years she was core faculty in the Transdisciplinary Design MFA program. Lisa collaborates with learning scientists from psychology, neuroscience and education to design research experiments that have social impact in the classroom and partners with universities on speculative design projects that explore the future(s) of higher education. She regularly publishes on design research and is currently a chief investigator on a federally funded research grant into teacher change and innovative learning through the University of Melbourne.
Lucinda McGroarty graduated from the Ryerson School of Interior Design in the spring of 2013. During her four years at Ryerson, she became increasingly interested in the profound impact of design on all aspects of daily living. Lucinda is currently a Master of Design student at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her thesis project focuses on type 1 diabetes (T1D), specifically the impact of “diabetes burnout” on mental health and wellbeing. Her work aims to increase awareness and promote the benefits of the T1D community to young adult and adult type 1 diabetics living in Canada.
Natalie Tillen is a 4th year Industrial Design student and research assistant for CloTHING(s) as Conversation at Emily Carr University. She has a strong interest in the future of clothing and systems of social practice. Her approach to design is process-based, exploring unrealized opportunities to embody and evolve our collective experiences.
Tina Yan is a Vancouver based communication designer currently studying her third year at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. With a strong focus on ecological and social issues, she is passionate about developing creative solutions for a variety of design problems, through discourse, research, ideation, iteration, and refinement. Her work consists of, but is not limited to, systems design, branding, packaging, and publication.
Acknowledgements
Current is the product of many conversations, meetings, hours of writing, editing, and many reviews. We could not have realized this project without the support of Dr. Ron Burnett, Dr. Maria Lantin, Jonathan Aitken and Kate Armstrong of the Research Office; Deborah Shackleton, Dean of the Faculty of Design and Dynamic Media; Grant Gregson, coordinator of the Teaching & Learning Center; Roxanne Toronto and Cari Bird of Communications; and Tara Wren, copy editor.
The Current team would like to thank the students in SOCS 309 F001 and F002 Design Research and Methods for their contributions to issue 07. Current is grateful for the support of the Emily Carr President’s Research Fund, the Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media through the office of the dean, and our advertisers.