Research
Doctoral Research
Funded Research
2009-2012
'Doing kinship with pictures and objects: a laboratory of private and public practices of art'
Arts and Science Collaborative Project (WWTF)
Principal Partner: Univ. Prof. Alison J. Clarke PhD. MA (RCA)
2008-present
'Centre of Critical Design Research: The Victor Papanek Archive and Library'
Infrastructure Programme (BMWF)
Principal Applicant: Univ. Prof. Alison J. Clarke PhD. MA (RCA)
2003-2006
'Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior'
RCA, London (AHRC)
Principal Investigator: Univ. Prof. Alison J. Clarke PhD. MA (RCA)
Doctoral Research
Students
Supervisor: Univ. Prof. Alison J. Clarke PhD. MA (RCA)
DI (FH) Kathrina Dankl Email
Very Experienced People [VEP]:
An Ethnography of Design, the Elderly and Style
This doctoral research considers the sensitive arena of addressing ‘the elderly’ in a period of dramatically changing perceptions of age and demographics. Contemporary methodologies that construct aging as a physically-based design ‘problem’ are abandoned in favour of new material culture approaches that trace the development and changes in aesthetic and symbolic values throughout the life course.
Mag.art. Martina Fineder Email
The Promise of the Alternative
A Cultural Exploration of Environmental Critical Design in West Germany in the 1970s
This doctoral research explores how and why design became the subject of a broader social and political discourse in 1970s West Germany. In order to understand how cultural criticism is embodied in things, this thesis will shed light on critical design from the 1990s, in terms of design history and material culture. It will include reflections on design against the background of the emerging new social movements with their heterogeneous values deriving from the ecology movement, the peace movement, women’s liberation, and civil rights initiatives.
Robert Gassner, Arch BA(Hons) MAA Email
(Doctoral Scholarship, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts)
Inhabitation as a Conduit in Buildings' Histories
Future inhabitants are often absent from the processes of designing and planning dwellings. Also when initial scenarios of inhabitation draw upon client-architect discussions, their validity is put to test over time. Generally, most buildings survive the protagonists of initial phases of design and construction and go on to encompass many generations and situations of occupancy. This thesis explores these asymmetrical relations in a study of notions and processes of inhabitation as used within architecural practice and as performed when dwelling.
Martina Grünewald, BBA MA Email
Modern Design Put to the Hammer:
Constructing the Value of Twentieth-Century Material Culture at Auction
How do things accumulate and divest of values in the process of social exchange? Charting the rise of design at auction this doctoral research project aims at describing how systems of value are created around material objects in cultural, aesthetic, and economic practice.
Bei Li, MA Email
When the Moon Meets the Cake:
Gift Consumption in the Transition of Chinese Society
Through exploration of representative contemporary Chinese cultural materials, specifically the moon-cake and its consumption as a gift, this thesis explores the dynamics of making and identifying the ‘Chinese’ from the ‘Western’, the ‘traditional’ from the ‘modern’, in contemporary Chinese culture. Using analysis of graphic design, material culture and practices of contemporary urban Chinese life, the research considers the transition marked by a “modern socialism with Chinese characters” that began in 1978, and the role of design in negotiating the ‘foreign’ and the ‘local’ in this era of globalization.
Heng Zhi, Mag.Des.Ind. (University of Applied Arts Vienna)
Redefining Design - Reflective Design Activities in Contemporary China
China's creative energy seems driven by the inseparable forces of affluence and the desire for recognition; ever more accelerated mass production, high-speed construction of spectacular architecture on a huge scale and the speculation of artists in auctions and galleries. Diving undernearth the widespread understanding of this creative process, this research explores the reflective design activities developing in the contemporary Chinese metropolis as an exploration of the process of (anti-)homogenization in a significant emerging culture.
Completed Doctorates
Univ.Prof. Mag. Dr. Sandra Dittenberger, New Design University, St. Pölten
Lived Mobility - The Experience of Personal Mobility
External Examiner: Prof. Ina Wagner, Technical University Vienna
Univ.Ass. Mag. Dr. Anna Weiß, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
Hyper-Domesticity: Gender and the Contemporary Interior
External Examiner: Edelbert Köb, Director MUMOK
Özlem Savas, M.Sc., Ph.D., Lecturer Design and Communication, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
Taste Diaspora: The Aesthetic and Material Practice of Belonging
External Examiner: Prof. John Storey, University of Sunderland, UK
