Team

Brian is Head of Belfast School of Art at Ulster University and Co-Principal Investigator for CO-CREATE — an Irish Government funded Research Partnership exploring the role of art and design in developing inclusive futures across Ireland in areas such as healthcare, public service delivery and climate action. He is also currently President Elect of the Institute of Designers Ireland (acceding for the 2027-28 term). His research interests span a number of domains, including how design practice can help us to ask and answer philosophic questions, support academic research and strengthen democracy.

Declan Long is Head of Doctoral Studies and Co-director MA / MFA Art in the Contemporary World at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin. He is Co-Principal Investigator for CO-CREATE.

Professor Alex Milton is a design academic, researcher and practitioner. He is Head of the School of Design at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Ireland. His work focuses on participatory design, creative pedagogy and design for policy – developing national design strategies and running national design initiatives. He has authored 8 books including Product Design (published by Laurence King, and translated into three languages).

Alison Gault is a Professor of Regenerative Textiles and Circular Fashion, with a focus on biomaterials and fabrication. She is Fashion theme lead for the RISC+ (6.5M) project and is CoLead on the AHRC Future Island‑Island (7M), and Textile lead for the IntertradeIreland Biodirect 2 and the Environmental Protection Agency REVEIRE project. Teaching Textiles and Fashion at Belfast School of Art, where she is also Placement Lead. Currently a Senior HEA Fellow, Design Council Expert, and Irish Grown Wool Council member.

Angela O’Kelly is Head of Department of Design for Body and Environment at NCAD, a designer-maker, and curator. Her materials-led, research-driven practice spans jewellery, textiles, and objects, championing sustainable and regenerative design, and is held in major international public and private collections. Her curatorial work connects audiences with contemporary craft.

Caoimhe leads the MA and Professional Diploma Service Design, and Design Lab: Civic. Her work focuses on public sector service design, and the role of life-centred design approaches in improving citizen experiences. She is particularly interested in how co-design approaches, collaborative sense-making, and experience prototyping can be embedded within public sector organisations to support service transformation.

Dr Catherine O’Hara teaches design history at BSoA. Her research is focused on the role and status of design, design education and design reform in Northern Ireland in the interwar period and the Ulster linen industry. She is Post Graduate Tutor and supervises PhD researchers in design and textile history and material culture.

Cróna O’Donoghue is a lecturer in the Department of Design and Creative Media at Atlantic Technological University, Donegal and co-founder of design firm ODDesign. Her professional background incorporates design, curation, event and arts management, and community engagement. She is currently completing her PhD in CSM, University of Arts London.

Dr Dominic Thorpe is an artist and assistant lecturer in the Department of Sculpture and Expanded Practice at NCAD. He works across performance art, video, drawing, installation, collaborative and relational processes. Research interests include perpetrator trauma representation and the role of the body in contemporary art. He also regularly works with artists at the inclusive KCAT studio.

Dr Campbell teaches photography at Ulster University and recently produced the Abortion Utopia toolkit for her Shared Island post-doc. Campbell’s exhibitions and publications encompass the work of Alliance for Choice and Array Collective, where she is Co-convenor and 1/11th member artist respectively. The Wholly Trinity film combines her roles succinctly.

Emma Creighton is a design researcher and lecturer at NCAD, leading DesignLabs: Health. Working with clinical, academic, and community partners, she investigates how design can be embedded within health and social care systems to support service improvement, strengthen organisational capability, and improve experiences and outcomes of care.

Dr. Isobel Cunningham is a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Atlantic Technological University. Her research and professional interests focus on entrepreneurship education, inclusive entrepreneurship, social enterprise development and growth, and the ways in which social entrepreneurs build and leverage social capital. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Cunningham actively collaborates with government and industry bodies that support SMEs and the social enterprise sector.

Jye O’Sullivan is an art historian and researcher of visual cultures. Their research has previously focussed on the intersections between artistic practice and cybernetics, with a specific focus on the artistic uses of cybernetics within a Latin American context. Jye’s present research interests include decolonial cybernetics, posthumanism, ecological ethics and the philosophy of technology.

Dr Kyle Boyd is a Lecturer in Digital Design at Belfast School of Art, Ulster University. His work explores how digital technologies can be designed, evaluated and applied to support people, services and communities. He has published across areas including usability, interface design, digital health, user experience evaluation and the measurement of user experience.

Louise is an Associate Professor, course director for The MSc in Design for Health and Wellbeing and lecturer on the BSc. Product Design & Technology UL. Louise is the founding member of the Product Design and the Performing Arts (PDPA) research group.

Dr. Muireann McMahon is Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Product Design at University of Limerick. Her research and teaching focus on Sustainable Design, Design for Social Impact and Design for Wellbeing. She explores, through collaborative studios, projects and publications how creative processes support meaningful change for people and the planet.

Pamela Whitaker is a lecturer in art psychotherapy at the Belfast School of Art. She is a researcher and educator interested in ecologies of care, creative health, the art of gardening, and food designers. She practices under the name of Groundswell, a social enterprise supporting hospitality, pride of place and habitats for regeneration.

Tom O’Dea is an artist who works with mixed-media sculpture and participatory practice to explore ways how different forms of knowledge impact upon our ways of acting and being the world. His work interrogates the political implications of knowledge production, practices of computation and organisation in contemporary society. Tom is a lecturer in Sculpture and Expanded Practice at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.