The School of Design at Northumbria University has a number of PhD Design Studentships for 2010.  We are looking for exceptional candidates who are willing to push the boundaries of design research and practice, contest accepted wisdom and explore new design thinking and processes within your chosen field of study.

We conduct applied and theoretical research into products, places, services and technologies, adopting innovative approaches and utilising methods that cut across and in between conventional disciplinary, conceptual, theoretical, and methodological boundaries.

The School of Design has an international reputation for its design research and provides a welcoming, creative and supportive community for PhD researchers.  The School of Design has recently invested in 5 new Professors of Design who have extensive experience of PhD supervision, and we now wish to support a range of individual research projects.

We now have a number of opportunities for design-led PhD research in, but not limited to, the following areas:

* Technologies - Social Technology Tools for Design; Experience Sketching, Prototyping and Evaluation; Exploring ‘Touch’ in Design.

* Understanding and Explaining Objects - New Practices in Seeing and Thinking; The Idea of Design; The Mystery of Design; Luxury and Craft; Contemporary Craft Practice; The Role of Craft in Design.

* The Design Activity - The Future of Design Practice; Distributed Design Practice; Design and Globalisation; Design’s Evolving Role within Society; Design Activism; Design Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Exploratory and Experimental Design Research Methodologies.

* Disciplinarity - Hybrid Design Practice; The Erosion of Conventional Design Disciplines; Post-Disciplinary Design Practice; The Non Designer.

* Being Human - Resilient and Sustainable Lifestyle Design; Designing for Better User-Interactions; Human Centred Problem Solving; Cultural Characteristics of Design; Interaction Design; Ethical Fashion.

* Audiences - Design Against Crime; Service Design; Design Pedagogy; Design for All, Designing for an Ageing Society, Universal Design; The Politics of Bringing Design to Market.