Dr Niki Wallace

Biography

Dr Niki Wallace is a researcher, educator, and designer focused on Design for Transitions, with research interests spanning co-creation and collaboration, regenerative cultures, circular design, and relational principles as core aspects of these transitions.

Wallace's research in Design for Transitions focuses on activating and accelerating Just Transitions, developing methods for complex collaboration, and nurturing regenerative cultures. A curiosity relating to the psychology of change is also driving an exploration of how designers might consider designing for grief and 'letting go' as part of transitions. Wallace's approach to Design for Transitions is informed by theories and methods from Transitions Studies and Social Sciences, and works closely with theories and principles from Living Systems, Complex Adaptive Systems Leadership and Complexity Science. Wallace's transitions framework and tools have been embedded in curricula in multiple institutions and have been applied at UAL as a means for better understanding the institution as a complex adaptive system.

Wallace is currently funded as an AHRC Innovation Scholar in partnership with Design Council where they are conducting participatory action research that aims to deepen understandings of systems-oriented design competencies, and to develop criteria for the design of systemic interventions. As part of this research, Wallace is prototyping learning materials for Continuing Professional Development with a collaborative team from UAL, Design Council and a network of UK-based universities.

Wallace co-founded UAL's Complex Design Collaboration Research Group with Rosie Hornbuckle and together they regularly host public seminars and Post Graduate Researcher Workshops exploring key topics and practices in complex collaboration. The group also hosts a podcast series, Carnival at the Boundaries, which reflects upon themes arising from the group's seminars and events.

Wallace's prior transitions research projects include:
- a pilot study of climate systems mapping in higher education institutions (focused on UAL) alongside a contextualised toolkit for expanded study of transitions in Higher Education Institutions
- participatory action research exploring food deserts and catalysing regional food system transitions in peri-urban South Australia
- case study of catalysing transitions to circularity and low waste in two primary schools in South Australia
- PhD focused on design’s acceleration of the consumption and waste problem by examining designing against consumption. The thesis presents a case study exploring ‘what it takes’ to redirect design practices to design for transitions.

Through educational leadership roles in the development of the Collective and Collaborative Practices undergraduate unit, Graphic Design Programme (as Interim Programme Director) and MA Global Collaborative Design Practice (as a Course Leader and Unit leader), Wallace supports students’ development of the critical collaborative skills needed to realise regenerative and just futures. Wallace’s prior teaching experience spans undergraduate and postgraduate design in BA Communication Design studio, BA Critical Design Theory, MA Research Methods, and MA Consumer Culture and Critical Design at University of South Australia.

Currently Wallace is supervising five PhDs with topics spanning the pursuit of eco-social justice through object based learning; the use of assemblage and critical spatial practices in the mitigation of climate change and biodiversity loss; identifying leverage points and facilitating multi-level design experiments for just transitions; and envisaging future practices and institutions for just transitions; the use of participatory methods to enhance civic competencies and critical engagement with issues of artificial intelligence.

Wallace is also an advisor to the Erasmus funded 'Climate Truth Crisis' project, the Future-Island-Island funded 'Putting Nature on the Board' project, and to Net Zero Lab (Australia) which she founded in 2019 as a living lab collective of designers and researchers who practice emergent approaches to generative co-design, regenerative futures and design for transitions.