Staff Research Profiles

I suspect I’m a naïve person at heart, and my research is approached as such. Craft as a technology, an ethos, a method of doing things, allows me to witness what happens when two disparate things or ideas are brought together, in order to investigate the intersection. Heidegger’s notions of zuhandenheit (readiness-to-hand) and vorhandenheit (presence-at-hand) are key concepts in my approach. How can the techniques and processes of traditional craft that are ready-to-hand develop design objects that communicate a presense-to-hand that permits these objects to go beyond their tool-like state? What and where is the value in an object when it no longer fits into a cleanly constructed schema? Are there other ways in which we can define the world that we construct and share?

Aside from the practice-based research component, I am also actively involved in written and presentation work, most recently having presented text and ideas at conferences including New Craft Future Voices (University of Dundee, 2007); Love Objects! (NSAD Dublin, 2008), and Crafticulation (University of Helsinki, 2008).

Design