Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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PAPERS: Curriculum and pedagogies in design Location: 50 George Square, G.04 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-50 Session Chair: Nicole Lotz, The Open University Session Chair: Ricardo Sosa, University of Waikato | |
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Design education leadership as constellation practice: Moving beyond the heroic leader 1: Heriot-Watt University Dubai, United Arab Emirates; 2: University of Dundee, Scotland, UK Design education is increasingly engaging with global challenges that extend beyond its traditional scope. This study adopts a constellation perspective to explore leadership as a pluralistic, relational, and interpretive practice suited to navigating complexity. A selective literature review spanning 25 years across design education, leadership, management, and research reveals six key provocations: systemic disruption, institutional constraints, commercial pressures, universalising narratives, dominant Western paradigms, and limited critical engagement. These highlight tensions that shape contemporary leadership discourse. The findings invite reflection on leadership as a capacity-building process, one that encourages abductive reasoning, material inquiry, evidentiary thinking, financial awareness, and ethical reflection through situated practice. The paper offers an alternative way of looking at how we might lead better; it is both propositional and a provocation. Leadership is framed as a practice rooted in care, judgment, and epistemic integrity, read across rather than reduced to any single model. View Paper: https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.777
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