Dr Susan Stewart
Adjunct Fellow School of Design
Dr Susan Stewart is a specialist in practice theory, phenomenology, philosophies of technology, design history, sustainability and social innovation.
As a senior lecturer, Susan teaches within both undergraduate and postgraduate programs and supervises postgraduate research across diverse design disciplines. Her current research students are drawn from visual communication design, fashion design and spatial design.
Susan’s education and early years in practice were in architectural design. Since receiving her PhD, she has researched and taught across diverse areas of spatial and interdisciplinary design, especially in areas of design history and theory. Within these, her focus has been on phenomenological and sociological approaches to the contexts both for making, and for dwelling in and being with, designed objects and environments.
She has a strong interest in sustainability and social innovation, and understands design as an (often wayward and unpredictable) agent of change. Her current work mobilises practice theory, philosophies of technology, and actor-network theory to describe contexts for design, and to explore motivations for and barriers to change.