Prof. Rachel Cooper OBE

University of Lancaster

Professor Rachel Cooper, OBE, is a Distinguished Professor of Design Management and Policy at Lancaster University, and President of the Design Research Society. Professsor Cooper’s fields of research interest cover design management, design policy, new product development, design in the built environment, design against crime and socially responsible design. Her research activities run in tandem with her day to day supervision of PhD Students at Lancaster University.

Professor Cooper has undertaken several advisory roles to national and international universities, government and non-governmental organisations She has promoted design research through contributions to UK research councils including through her membership of the board of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council commissioning panels.

She has authored several books including The Design Agenda (1995), The Design Experience (2003), Designing Sustainable Cities (2009), Constructing Futures (2010), A Handbook of Design Management (2011) and is currently commissioning editor for an Ashgate Series on Socially Responsible Design.

Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, representative of the College of Medallists on the Awards Committee has said:

“Rachel Cooper is a pioneer in teaching and researching design – within an academic environment – in ways which strongly relate to the practice of design as well as its study. She has created innovative forms of design research which are timely and relevant, as well as being rigorous, and in the process she has persuaded research councils that ‘design’ is a worthy subject for serious funding. She has evolved and led a significant community of researchers at Lancaster, in the areas of product and service design, policy and social responsibility, and management. And she has achieved all this while retaining the confidence of the design community – often suspicious of academic research. She is a very worthy recipient of the 2015 Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education”.
 
imagination.lancs.ac.uk

Prof. Rachel Cooper OBE

University of Lancaster

Sir Misha Black Award

2015