Institute for Design Innovation

Our doctoral researchers

auri-evokari

Auri Evokari

Auri is a Doctoral Researcher with the Institute for Design Innovation. After working in entrepreneurship support both in her home country Finland as well as in Southern Africa, she is driven to enable early-stage technology startup entrepreneurship through her research.
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boeun-bethany-hong

Boeun Bethany Hong

Boeun's research interest is the role of design in shaping/reshaping human experience, focused on the experiences around the disability stigma. Her research is part of the 'Para Sport Against Stigma (PSAS)', a multi-disciplinary project for social innovation to break down barriers of disability stigma through parasport.
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Britta Boyer, PhD student

Britta Boyer

Britta holds a PhD from the Institute for Design Innovation, Loughborough University, London, and an MA in Sustainable Design from the University of Brighton. She completed a BA in Fashion Design at Central St. Martins, London, in 1995, founded three international start-ups and was an early pioneer of the fashion sustainability movement in 1995, working with post-consumer denim waste for her own brand, Earth 33, with a grant from the Prince's Trust. Britta has previous creative industry experience as a distinguished designer with a history of accolades, including the Whistles New Designer of the Year (2006), IDEA (1998), and Barker Brown Creative Industry awards (1997).
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Devika Sharma

Devika Sharma

Devika's research is centred around design activism, with emphasis on how creativity and innovation facilitate citizen participation in harnessing social change.
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GEORGE MWIKA KAYANGE

George Mwika Kayange

George is a Doctoral Researcher with the Institute for Design Innovation. He is researching innovations and scaling of assistive technology (AT) solutions in Malawi, Kenya, and South Africa to support people with disabilities. George holds an MBA in Project Management from the University of Zambia and a Bachelor of Science in Project Management from the Institute of Development Management (IDM) in Botswana.
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Johannes Willem Heesbeen

Johannes is interested in the reflective habits within Design Practices. These habits can illuminate the various dependencies and forms of sub-ordination, which are at play in creative business and design practices in particular.
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Yasemin Canik

Yasemin Canik

Yasemin's research focuses on how start-ups developing new products manage user-centred design. Her dissertation is based on theories of knowledge boundaries and boundary objects. Her PhD is fully funded by Loughborough University. To contribute to her PhD research, she is also working as a Design and Marketing Officer in HSSMI.
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Federico Vaz Canosa

Federico Vaz Canosa

Federico's research interest is in the use of design in the public sector, more precisely on the use and role of design for public policy innovation.
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Talia Hussain

Talia is a doctoral researcher with the Institute for Design Innovation. She has over 20 years experience working as a designer and an MBA (merit) from Imperial College. Her research is funded by Techne and focuses on retail and the circular economy.
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Kavitha Ravikumar

Kavitha is a doctoral researcher at Loughborough University London, who works in the area of Sustainability studies through a multidisciplinary approach. She is affiliated with both the Institute for International Management and the Institute for Design Innovation.
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Sophie Declerck

Sophie is a doctoral researcher in the Institute for Design Innovation. Her research interests include aesthetic theory, Peircean pragmatism and biosemiotics, sensory design, posthuman philosophies, and design ontology.
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Sophie Declerck

Sophie is a doctoral researcher in the Institute for Design Innovation. She studies meaning-making practices and the role of aesthetics in design, with a particular focus on the sense of touch.
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Stephen Cho

Stephen’s research explores the impact of institutional arrangement on resource integration within the context of Creative Professional Service Firm.
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Vicky Gerrard

For over 10 years Vicky has worked internationally with government, civil society, industry, and academia, researching how to enhance participation through design practice. She is continuing this work at Loughborough to develop a design pedagogy thats supports people to reclaim boundaries of freedom from within hostile environments.
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