I am a designer, researcher and lecturer in design at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture. Previously I have worked at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Aarhus University, Denmark.
My research interests focus around situated critical, speculative design as a research practice. I’m interested in DIY design, care, the notion of the Anthropocene, bikes and trail building, and how design might be done with a non-anthropocentric ethic. A semi-up-to-date Google Scholar research profile can be found here.
I am currently working on: (1) An AHRC funded research project Co-designing Forests exploring access, participation and the design of ‘wild’ spaces and woodlands with a more-than-human ethic. (2) An ongoing ethnography of bike trail builders drawing on architecture, participatory design and inventive methods, and an upcoming edited book collection BMX Cultures. (3) An EPSRC Ecological Citizens funded project Prototyping Multispecies Encounters in collaboration with Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust which seeks to address the polycrisis of biodiversity collapse, habitat loss, and climate damage being experienced by nature reserves in the UK by imagining, prototyping and deploying speculative research devices.
Among other things.
I completed my PhD in 2020, titled: Designing Unlikely Futures? A/symmetry & A-firmative Speculation in the European Borderscape. Link to PDF of thesis.
I am a component in the collective Design Unlikely Futures: http://duf.space/
I aim to design through making — to think through materials and their processes by experimenting, modelling and prototyping. I tend towards the title of ‘trans-disciplinary designer’ (for now), and have used design for a wide range of projects and outcomes, for lots of different people, as my CV shows.
I regularly design and run workshops in lots of different institutions.
Previously I have worked closely with Kin Design collaborating with them on a number of projects.
I also collect things as part of my practice, for example, notions of design for the end of the world, RAL7016 grey buildings, and helium balloons in the wild.
You can contact , I have deleted twitter, but can be found @liam-healy on Bluesky