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UE08 £44,414 - £52,841 Per Annum

College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences / Edinburgh College of Art / School of Design

Open-ended (Permanent)

35 hours per week (full-time)

Edinburgh College of Art wishes to recruit a highly motivated, thoughtful and collaborative person, a scholar-teacher-practitioner of the highest calibre, to an open-ended contract as Lecturer in Social Design. This position will be within the School of Design at Edinburgh College of Art, the University of Edinburgh, starting in the 2023/24 academic year.

The successful applicant will possess an existing track record of high-quality research/practice, and be educated to PhD level (or professional equivalent) in a discipline pertinent to the postgraduate interdisciplinary design programme to which they will be aligned, Design for Change. This programme draws upon foundations in design theory and practice, the arts more widely, the environmental humanities, and social sciences. Design for Change fosters the study and co–exploration of wide-ranging, complex and topical issues—from disruptive technologies or ageing populations to economic instability or environmental degradation. In the programme, students are supported in their examination of how design, broadly understood, might help bring about the changes they wish to see in the world.

The successful applicant will share the programme’s interest in prefigurative politics, the interweaving of theory and practice, and its broad understanding of design (e.g. including a variety of designerly disciplines and those cognate to design, and including the non-professionalised, the indigenous, that which has been historically marginalised or not previously included in the canon, and the adhoc and improvised). They will thus have a very good knowledge of a variety of approaches to the theory, pedagogy, history and practice of design, craft and architecture and the arts more widely. They will also have a strong interest in design justice and some experience of (and/or certainly an interest in developing) community and/or policy engagement, public/social art, participatory and co-design and/or (design) activism.

The Opportunity

Edinburgh College of Art’s dynamic Design for Change MA programme are looking to recruit a colleague to join the team in a permanent position. The successful new postholder will be supported to develop their teaching, research and citizenship here, at the University of Edinburgh, and as they do so, will be able to help shape the future of the Design for Change programme. They will be invited to undertake teaching that will be focussed at postgraduate level, with a specialism determined by their research interests and the programme’s core course needs. There will be opportunity to work with a committed team of colleagues in the Design School and beyond, and with our Design for Change students - cohorts of talented and enthusiastic changemakers from across the world. Alongside this, the postholder will be able to supervise or start to supervise PHD candidates, will be supported to be a key member of the Critical Change design research group, and will be encouraged to contribute to the research culture within the School of Design, ECA and the wider University through networks such as the Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network, and via the activities of institutes such as the Edinburgh Futures Institute or Edinburgh Climate Change Institute.

Building on their track record of practice and research, the postholder will continue to produce high quality research and knowledge exchange activities of national/international impact in the field of design practice and/or theory. Subject-wise, we are seeking a colleague who will complement our existing permanent staff’s skills and knowledge base, and who will be able to speak to issues of the relationship between power and design, to the topics of action, activism and agonism, to social design as political and utopian, to design’s (place within) forces and systems of production, consumption and obsolescence, and to the issues of equity and justice as they intersect with our subject. They should be familiar with and broadly positioned within the area of scholarship and action that might broadly be called Social Design, and associated fields such as Transition and Circular Design, but can come to this from any of a number of different disciplinary/multidisciplinary perspectives. We would also expect that the role holder would be aware of - and part of - important movements within the academy to decolonise our disciplines and to address the climate emergency the world is facing.

We’d like our new Lecturer in Social Design to devise and run a new 20 credit core course within the Design for Change Programme, something based on their interests and expertise, and would love to hear from prospective candidates what they might offer. Subject-wise their research might be more practice/making-driven or more theoretical and philosophical, but they should be comfortable with the programme’s approach which is to value design’s material agency through fostering an attention to both practice and theory from our students and reflecting both in our teaching. Furthermore, we need our new colleague to be able to help with the work of running our summer Dissertation course which means that they must be comfortable advising both on the more practical aspects of postgraduate design research (for change!) and assessing written theses.

Fundamentally, the opportunity is to join a programme that wants to help imaginative, critically-minded, changemakers make a difference in the world, and to help ensure that this is what we are achieving.

Your skills and attributes for success:

• You will be educated to PhD level or possess commensurate experience in arts and design practice, policy engagement, activism or other appropriate field for contribution to Design for Change’s teaching programme.
• You will have a commitment to teaching and learning and supporting students from a variety of backgrounds and cultures. You will be a great listener, have relevant (academic) teaching experience in a studio environment, and be comfortable assessing written works such as masters’ theses as well as work in other media/multi-modal formats. Knowledge of a variety of approaches to and methods in creative and contemporary designerly and artistic practice, will be an advantage.
• You will have a demonstrated track record of research excellence and be able to evidence this (pertaining either to practical outputs, written outputs or both) and have work that is of international visibility and standard.
• You will be able to demonstrate knowledge and experience of managing courses and assessments within a Higher Education context, and working with colleagues – including organising and planning staffing – to deliver high quality, interdisciplinary, imaginative and critical education.
• You will be able to demonstrate experience of project management and administration, as well as skills and talent in both leading and cooperating with others.

We expect the candidate to be in post from the beginning of September 2023, and no later than 1st January 2024.

Informal enquiries concerning the post can be made to:
Dr. Rachel J. Harkness (Programme Director, Design for Change [MA]; Co-Convenor of the ‘Critical Change’ Design Research Group; email: [email protected])
Mal Burkinshaw (Head of the School of Design, email: [email protected])

More information on Design for Change here:
https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/design-change-ma and here http://www.designforchange.eca.ed.ac.uk/ (student-produced site)

Click here for a copy of the full job description and selection criteria.

Closing date: 27th June, 11:59PM

As a valued member of our team you can expect:

An exciting, positive, creative, challenging and rewarding place to work. We give you support, nurture your talent and reward success. You will benefit from a competitive reward package and a wide range of staff benefits, which includes a generous holiday entitlement, a defined benefits pension scheme , staff discounts, family friendly initiatives , flexible working and much more. Access our staff benefits page for further information and use our reward calculator to find out the total value of pay and benefits provided.

The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality.

The University is able to sponsor the employment of international workers in this role. If successful, an international applicant requiring sponsorship to work in the UK will need to satisfy the UK Home Office’s English Language requirements and apply for and secure a Skilled Worker Visa.