Dr Katie Pfeiffer

  • Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute for Creative Futures

Profile

Katie is a postdoctoral researcher for the Becoming Regenerative Lab, researching how regenerative innovations emerge, evolve, and gain momentum.

Specific areas of interest include questions of materiality, responsibility, efficacy, and agency of design within the Anthropocene. Her research examines how ethical frames and value judgements are reworked for makers working with more-than-humans in the context of ecological and climate crisis.

Academic background

In 2024, Katie received her PhD in Design Anthropology from UCL, where her research focused on biodesign practitioners in London. She completed a master’s degree in Social Anthropology in 2017 from Oxford University, and her bachelor’s in 2014 from UCL.

Katie also has 8 years of experience working as a brand strategist and consultant.

Research

Current research

Katie’s current research is with Becoming Regenerative, an ESRC/AHRC-funded project. She is working across the project’s work packages - digging into the discovery of opportunities, promising materials, and initial motivations by designers in institutional labs as well as their actualisation and impact within entrepreneurial organisations. 

Through interviews, ethnography, and workshops, she is engaging with emerging designers and more established companies working towards implementing regenerative innovations.

As part of the Becoming Regenerative project, Katie is collaborating with researchers from UCL and the RCA.

Areas of research interest

  • Ascriptions of value
  • Material agency
  • More-than-human ethics
  • Design futures and their politics
  • Organisational structures
  • Relations