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Professor of Design Management
|  Rachel Cooper |
Rachel Cooper is Professor of Design Management at the University of Lancaster, where she is Chair of Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts and also ImaginationLancaster (a centre for research into products, places and systems for the future). Her research interests cover design management, design policy, new product development, design in the built environment, design against crime, and socially responsible design. Projects includes: EPSRC (i) A Study of Requirements Capture; (ii) Cost and Benefits of Partnering iii) Generic Design & Construction Process Protocol - a five year study involving numerous industrial collaborators e.g. BAA, Alfred McAlpine, BT, (iv) Future scenarios for Distributed Design Teams; (v) three projects for the Design Council/Home Office on Design Against Crime; (iv) also for the Design Council and government, a study of the use of Design in Government Departments e.g. DTI, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and DCMS.
Between 2003 and 2008 she led 'Vivacity 2020: Sustainable Urban Design for the 24 Hour City', a £3m EPSRC funded project over five years looking at Manchester, London, and Sheffield - http://www.vivacity2020.eu. She was co-investigator upon the AHRC/EPSRC funded 'Design 2020: The UK Design Industry in 2020' which was completed in 2008 - http://www.ukdesign2020.org. Professor Cooper is currently co-investigator of 'Urban Futures', a five year EPSRC funded research project http://www.urban-futures.org.
She has authored several books in the field including The Design Agenda (1995), The Design Experience (2003), Designing Sustainable cities (2009), Constructing Futures (2010) and is currently commissioning editor for an Ashgate series on Socially Responsible Design. She was commissioned in May 2007 by the Foresight programme on Mental Wellbeing and Mental Capital to write the Scientific Review on Mental Wellbeing and the Built Environment. Professor Cooper is President of the European Academy of Design, and Editor of The Design Journal.
Professor Cooper has undertaken several advisory roles to national and international universities, government and non-governmental organisations. She was a member of Infrastructure and Environment Strategic Advisory Team of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) until 2005. She has also chaired EPSRC commissioning panels on Crime and the cross council review of UK National Collaboration on Ageing Research programme and she was mentor on EPSRC Sandpits on Mobile Health and Countering Terrorism in 2006/7. Professor Cooper was UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) panel convenor for visual arts and media practice, history, theory Postgraduate awards between 2000 & 2005, and sat on the Council of the AHRC (2000/10). She was also a member of the advisory panel on the AHRC/ESRC's Cultures of Consumption programme and chairs the advisory panel for the AHRC/EPSRC's 'Designing for the 21st Century' initiative. She was a member of the UK Research Assessment Exercise Paanel for Art and Design in 2008, chaired the research review panel for art, design architecture and media for Alto University, (2009) and was a member of the Research Assessment exercise for Gothenburg University 2010. She is currently on the EU Design and Innovation Initiative Leadership Board.
Koo, Yoori and Cooper, Rachel (2011) Managing corporate social responsibility through design. The Design Management Institute, 22 (1). pp. 68-79. ISSN 1948-7169
Youngok, Choi and Cooper, Rachel and Lim, Sungwoo and Evans, Martyn (2011) The relationship between national policy and industrial development in the UK and South Korea, 1940s-2000s. Design Issues, 27 (1). pp. 70-82. ISSN 0747-9360
Cooper, Rachel and Boyko, Christopher (2010) How to design a city in five easy steps : exploring VivaCity 2020’s process and tools for urban design decision making. Journal of Urbanism, 3 (3). pp. 253-273. ISSN 1754-9183
Boyko, C. T. and Cooper, R. and Davey, C. L. and Wootton, A.B. (2010) Informing an urban design process by way of a practical example. Urban Design and Planning, 163 (1). pp. 17-30. ISSN ISSN: 1755-0793, E-ISSN: 1755-0807
Choi, Youngok and Cooper, Rachel and Lim, Sungwoo and Evans, Martyn (2010) National Support for Design: Developing propositional models. Design Management Review, 21 (4). pp. 60-69. ISSN 1557-0614
Evans, Martyn and Cooper, Rachel (2006) Breaking From Tradition: Market Research, Consumer Needs and Design Futures. Design Management Review (Journal of Design Management Institute), 17 (1). 68 -74. ISSN 10457194
Cooper, Rachel and Jones, C. and Perks, H. (2005) Characterising the Role of Design in a New Product Development: An Empirically Derived Taxonomy. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 22 (2). pp. 111-127. ISSN 07376782
Cooper, Rachel (2005) Ethics and Aesthetics: What Constitutes Socially Responsible Design?. Design Management Institute, 16 (3). pp. 10-18. ISSN 10457194
Cooper, Rachel and Junginger, Sabine and Lockwood, Thomas (2011) The handbook of design management. 9781847884909 . Berg. (Unpublished)
Chan, Paul and Cooper, Rachel (2010) Constructing futures : industry leaders and future thinking in construction. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781405157971
Cooper, Rachel and Ghassan, A. and Lee, A. and Wu, S. (2004) Process Management in Design and Construction. Blackwells. ISBN 9781405102117
Cooper, Rachel and Press, M. (2003) The Design Experience. Gower Press, London. ISBN 0-566-07891-0
Evans, M. D. and Cooper, Rachel and Hall, N. (2005) Tales of the Unexpected: Understanding Emergence and its relationship to Design. In: 6th International Conference of Computational and Cognitive models of Creative Design, 1900-01-01, Heron Island, Australia.
Williams, Alex and Cooper, Rachel and Evans, Martyn and Sun, Qian (2009) 2020 Vision - The UK Design Industry 10 Years On:Implications for Design Businesses of the Future. In: Designing for the 21st Century. Gower, Farnham, pp. 39-54. ISBN 9781409402404
Professor Rachel Cooper took up her new post at as Director of LICA Lancaster University on July 1, 2006.
Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA), based in Lancaster University's faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, is an interdisciplinary centre which brings together Art, Music, Theatre, Film and Design to form an institute focusing on the Contemporary Arts. The institute also incorporates public arts provision at Lancaster - the Peter Scott Gallery, Nuffield Theatre and Lancaster International Concerts called LIVE@LICA
Professor Cooper, who has held her post at Salford for 15 years, said in 2006, she was looking forward to the opportunity to develop a centre which was still in its infancy.
"Creativity has an important role part to play in the modern world in terms of innovation, development and research. This is an exciting opportunity to lead the LICA, to bring together Art, Music and Theatre Studies as well as developing a team of researchers in Design.
"I particularly welcome the opportunity to develop interdisciplinary research, not only between the subjects within LICA but also between LICA and other Lancaster University centres such as the Lancaster Environment Centre, the Management School and InfoLab21 - Lancaster University's centre of excellence for Information Communication Technology."
In 2011 LICA opened its new building, a special purpose multidisciplinary space that houses event space, acoustic labs, a black box and gallery installation space, all multi-configurable. The building also houses and ImaginationLancaster (a design led research centre looking at products, places, service and interaction for the future) and the Highwire Centre for Doctoral Training, a collaboration between Design, Computing and Management. The building is currently the most sustainable university in the UK.
This building has enabled the expansion of the creative vision for LICA and offers the opportunities for ongoing innovation in research and teaching.