We offer MPhil and PhD by project and thesis.

The School of Design has a strong research culture with internationally significant research exhibited and published by staff, and MPhil, PhD and postdoctoral study. Much of the research is practice-based.

The five teaching areas of the School – Design Interactions, Design Products, Innovation Designing Engineering, Service Design and Vehicle Design – represent a wide range of approaches to research including industrially oriented and speculative methods. What unites them is a probing, imaginative approach to knowledge and a willingness to develop new research methods while ensuring rigour and depth. The School is also home to SustainRCA, which has a mission to inspire, encourage and support sustainability thinking across the College, and RapidformRCA, the digital manufacturing and rapid prototyping centre. There is also a close relationship with the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design and with InnovationRCA.

We understand that most of tomorrow’s products and services do not yet exist: researchers are inventing the future. For many of them, hands-on making is the most important research method. ‘Real world’ practice feeds into theory and vice versa. Much of the research focuses on new ways of thinking about design, and on new contexts and roles for design that relate to the social, cultural and ethical implications of current and emerging technologies.

Research benefits from science, technology and engineering through a close relationship with Imperial College London. Also nearby are the unrivalled resources of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Science Museum and Natural History Museum.

Recent funding has been received from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), EU Framework Seven, Innovation Fund of NHS London, the Helen Hamlyn Trust, Wellcome Trust, Carbon Connections and from companies including Microsoft, Intel, Tussauds Group and Philips. Research students and postdoctoral researchers are also funded by overseas governments and organisations.

Dr Stephen Boyd Davis
Research Leader, School of Design
design-research@rca.ac.uk