Clara Llamas González-Amezúa

Biography

I am a service designer, educator, and student with over 20 years of experience in design consultancy, entrepreneurship, operations, education, and mentoring. Having lived in eight countries, I have developed an open, resilient, and adaptive approach to design and collaboration. I am passionate about empowering designers through education, co-production, and shared purpose. Currently, I serve as the Academic Director of the Bachelor in Design program at IE University’s School of Architecture and Design in Madrid, Spain.

My expertise lies in service and organizational design across finance, retail, healthcare, the third sector, and startups. I have worked with clients such as J.P. Morgan, ALDI, Mango, adidas, the NHS, and Nesta. My work has been exhibited at the London Design Festival, the European Research Lab, Policy Lab UK at Cabinet Office, and Design Research for Change.

Research

My PhD research explores how service designers in large organizations can enhance their design practices by integrating insights from new kinship studies. This work critically examines the historical legacies embedded in services—often extractive and shaped by Western-European institutional paradigms (Prendiville, 2024; Inikori, 2002; Khalili, 2020; Farmer, 2020)—and investigates the potential of relational frameworks in service design. By shifting away from institutional logics and objectified labor towards models of mutual aid and communal sharing (Kim, 2018; Vink & Koskela-Huotari, 2017), the study builds on relational approaches to designing services through the lens of new kinship studies (Carsten, 2000; Andrikopoulos, 2023).

At its core, my research seeks to embed relational perspectives within organizations by drawing from kinship studies in anthropology. Through a combination of literature reviews and organizational experiments, I aim to develop both theoretical and practical frameworks that challenge existing power structures and foster interconnectedness. By applying a kinship-informed approach to service design in large, knowledge-intensive environments (+1,000 employees), I explore alternative models for organizational change.

Ultimately, my research prioritizes relationality, interconnectedness, and networks. It critically examines how service design can challenge asymmetrical power structures and contribute to more inclusive and participatory design practices. By integrating kinship models, I explore design’s potential to generate ethically grounded methods that support repair and regeneration. Moving beyond market-driven frameworks, my work addresses urgent social and ecological challenges, contributing to the evolving discourse on relational service design methodologies.