Professor Lucy Kimbell

Biography

Summary
Lucy Kimbell (PhD) is Professor of Contemporary Design Practices at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London where she convenes the Policy Futures Studio. Her research explores service design, social design and design for policy. She is co-director of the international Sustainable Transitions through Democratic Design Doctoral Network funded by the EU Marie Curie programme and led the Design and Public Policy Research Network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. An innovator in post-graduate education, she taught design on the MBA at Said Business School for 15 years, delivered executive education in design thinking and service design, and helped set up the MBA at Central Saint Martins.

Current and recent funded research projects
Lucy initiated and is Co-Director of the Sustainable Transitions through Democratic Design Doctoral Network funded by the EU Marie Curie scheme (2024-28) which provides fully-funded roles for 13 people in 8 universities in 7 countries to conduct original research at the intersection of design, sustainable transitions and democratic innovation. She is also Co-Investigator on a major AHRC grant to develop sustainabie approaches grounded in democratic localism in Ulster led by Belfast School of Art. Lucy was previously Principal Investigator of the AHRC Design & Policy Research Network (2022-23). Recent research keynotes include the International Association of Societies of Design Research (2023) and European Academy of Design (2023).

Previously, Lucy was Co-investigator on two cross-discpilinary ESRC funded projects. She also led the research in Creative Lenses, a four-year European collaboration project funded by Creative Europe (2015-19), about business models in arts organisations, funded through Creative Europe. She was the director of UAL's Social Design Institute (2019-2022), which brought together and amplified UAL's varied expertise in design for society through capacity building, joint research bids, new publications and public events. Before joining UAL Lucy was AHRC Research Fellow in Policy Lab in the Cabinet Office (2014-15), principal research fellow at the University of Brighton (2013-15) and Clark Fellow in Design Leadership at Said Business School, University of Oxford (2005-10).

Publications
Publications include the book Service Innovation Handbook (BIS Publishers, 2014, 3rd reprinting), many solo or co-authored articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Design and Culture, book chapters and conferences. Current writing projects include anticipatory research for a book entitled Futures for Design: Scenarios for Uncertain Worlds to be published by Taylor and Francis in 2026 and an edited collection with Marzia Mortati on sustainable transitions through democratic design.

Consultancy/knowledge exchange
Lucy led the development of a methodology for Design Council to capture and articulate the social, envirionmental and economic value of design, in collaboration with BOP Consulting, resulting in the new Design Value framework published in 2022. She has been supporting the UK Civil Service with its Public Design Evidence Review in 2023-4 to be published in mid 2025. Previously she supported the EU Policy Lab team deliver its project combining futures and design approaches exploring the future of government in 2030. Recent keynotes to the Irish Civil Service (2024), the Latvian State Chancellery Innovation Conference (2024) and Arantzazulab Democracy Innovation Centre, Basque Country (2024).

PhD supervisions and examining
Lucy supervises transdisciplinary research connecting design and creative practice with public policy or social contexts, with six completions to date. Supervising includes four studentships jointly funded by UAL and Kings College London at the intersection of design and public policy (three completions thus far) and three other completions. She has examined PhDs for UAL, LSE, Lancaster University, Copenhagen Technology University, Malmo University and Linkoping University. She is on the supervisory board for the PhD in Service Design for Public Sector at Sapienza University, Rome.

Artworks
Lucy's artworks include Air Pollution Toile (2018), a concept for wallpaper that changes in response to air pollution, commissioned by and shown at Modern Art Oxford (2018), and Pindices (2005), taking the form of physical bar charts, a collaboration with sociologist Andrew Barry, shown about 10 times internationally after originally being commissioned by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel for Making Things Public, ZKM Karlsruhe. Other experiments in materialising data including The Lix Index for Channel 4/Arts Council’s identinet (2002), Audit published by Bookworks (2002) and group exhibitions Soda at Lux Gallery (1998) and Declining Democracy at Palazzo Strozzi (2011).

Lucy co-founded one of the UK’s first digital arts groups, Soda, worked as a BBC radio business journalist and went on to work in digital innovation consultancy before joining academia full-time in 2005. She was a Project Trust volunteer teaching English in Sudan (one year) and later in Palestine and has also lived and worked in Warsaw (two years) and Barcelona (one year).