Northumbria DESIS Lab

Description

Northumbria DESIS lab (nDESIS) is part of the DESIS (Design for Social Innovation towards Sustainability) network. DESIS is a global network of design schools working to actively promoting and delivering design-led social innovation for sustainability.

The establishment and recognition of nDESIS reflects and cements the growing importance of social innovation research to Northumbria University Design. Although social innovation is a research theme with broad interest across Northumbria University, it is in Design where it connects with the fields of service design practice and co-designing, as represented by the increasing volume of undergraduate- and post-graduate-project-based learning activity, research projects and ongoing doctoral projects.

The DESIS network comprise of decentralised global, regional and local design ‘labs’, and acts to “foster social innovation and sustainability by taking part in support projects and programs, gathering together and offering greater visibility to significant cases”. It now has over 50 labs across Asia, Europe, South America, North America and Asia-Pacific. The network also provides a platform to share best practices across the world and to generate useful design knowledge and to create meaningful social changes in collaboration with other stakeholders.

nDESIS Lab brings together Northumbria Design’s Social Innovation research and teaching activities which focuses on public and third sector innovation through practice-based research that draws on design thinking and practice, social and management disciplines. There are three focal research questions they try to address:

• How should the role of the designer in social innovation contexts be reconceptualised?
• How could a sustainable socio-economic paradigm be developed to support social innovation practices?
• How can desirable social far futures near futures be made through the development of appropriate methodologies?

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

2012

Contact details

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Categorisation

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University affiliation(s)

Northumbria University
110-114 Middlesex St
London
E1 7HT