The Glasgow School of Art

Dr Cara Broadley can act as a Co-Supervisor.
Research Keywords: Participatory Design; Communities; Policy; Empowerment

Cara’s research is situated in contexts of public services, wellbeing, and equality, and explores the role of ethnographic methods, participatory design tools, and asset-based approaches in engaging with communities. Underpinned by her interest in the changing role of the designer and creative approaches to addressing complex societal challenges, in 2013 Cara completed her practice-based AHRC-funded PhD and has since been involved in several funded research projects including Flourish, Design in Action, Leapfrog, and Social Studios. These are aligned to Cara’s core research interests – innovative forms of knowledge exchange and dissemination across disciplines and secotors, and redefining notions of participation with communities deemed hard-to-reach to foster inclusive research processes and support creative outcomes. Developing her broad focus on reframing design’s role in supporting democratic decision-making processes and driving actionable change, particularly in the context of a Scottish approach to community empowerment and deliberative policy making, Cara’s expertise lies in the design, use, and critique of creative and participatory methods, tools, and techniques to enhance public engagement, participation, and collaboration for research. Her post in The Innovation School also involves research development, teaching, and supervising PhD and postgraduate research students. Potential areas of supervision include:

• participatory design and co-design
• design for social innovation
• the role of the designer
• visual methods and material practices
• design for policy making
• design anthropology, ethnography, and reflexivity