Dr Adela Glyn-Davies

Contact Details

Email:

Adela dot glyn-davies at warwick dot ac dot uk

Room: R2.28 (Ramphal Building)

Design Studies | Design and Global Sustainable Development

^{Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce
Fellow in Design - Warwick Institute of Global Sustainable Development}^{Fellow of the Warwick Institute of Engagement}^{Senior Fellow of the Academy of Higher Education}^{Editor and reviewer: Design Research Society}^{Full member and editor: Design Society}^{Full member and editor: Design History Society}

I am a systemic designer, researcher and interdisciplinary practitioner working at the intersections of complexity, systems, interactions and the transformative potential of design. My practice explores how design can help us perceive, navigate and intervene within complex social, economic, environmental, political and institutional systems. My early academic background is in mathematics and informatics, and my journey into design developed through an interest in cybernetics, interactivity, systems thinking as well as the arts and the more traditional design disciplines of visual communication, product design and data design.

My practice of design is not discipline bound and moves between the micro and the meta dependant on the levels of complexity a project entails — from individual experiences and visual narratives to organisational structures, social conditions and wider systemic relationships. I deliberately resist conventional disciplinary boundaries, working across systems and complexity thinking, visualisation, data and radical cartography, interaction, speculative practice, social design and emerging technologies. I am particularly interested in what systems fail to see regarding overlooked relationships, marginalised knowledge, contradictory data and lived experiences that resist straightforward categorisation.

I am the founding faculty of Warwick Design Studies and have led the department as Head and Director until September 2026. I have developed a significant strand of work around design education, institutional development and interdisciplinary practice. I am particularly interested in how systemic and complexity-led approaches can reshape the structures through which design is taught, practised and understood within higher education. My work in Design Studies brings systems and complexity thinking into dialogue with studio pedagogy, social design and Education for Sustainable Development, approaching curricula, institutions and learning communities themselves as complex and interconnected systems.

Personal and professional practice, as well as publication lists are published via HIPER/RITMIKA, adelaglyndavies.com.