Mr Peter Davis

Associate Head of School ADA

Programme Leader MA Design - Award Leader BA Design Cultures

Peter is Programme Leader for MA Design within the school of ADA (Art, Design and Architecture) and Design Cultures Leader for BA undergraduates.

Peter is MA Programme Leader in Design, incorporating Design Products, Maker and Materials, Service Design, Spatial Design and Sustainable Futures and Award Leader BA (Hons) Design Cultures. He leads a group of internationally acclaimed practitioners who teach systemic design thinking, inventing sustainably, designing aesthetically, creating useful and beautiful products, using digital manufacturing and fabrication, while developing new processes relevant to the 21st century.

With an extensive career working in Design Higher Education Peter’s experience covers the delivery, development, validation and examination of courses with students at local, national and international level, through to research activity.

Within the School of ADA Peter coordinates the Design Knowledge Research area with Message and iDAT.

Qualifications

Peter has received degrees from Cardiff College of Art and Design under the stewardship of Tom Hudson, two further degrees and scholarships from the Royal College of Art, under the stewardship of Peter Kardia and later John Stezka and Patrick Kiellier. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Authority.

Professional membership

Member of the Higher Education Academy, Design History Journal, Design Society, Design Research, Writing Pads, RCA Alum, Learning Institute, Fellow of Royal Society of Arts, Group for Learning in Art and Design, Research Drawing Network, RSA, Craft Action Network, European Academy of Design and DRS.

Roles on external bodies

Reviewer for the Journal of Design Practice and Principles
Associate Editor for volume 5 of Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal
Panel member at IADE Lisbon
European Academy of Design Conference Convenor
External Reviewer at BIAD
Chair of Trustees for EVA (Arts Studios)

Teaching interests

Broad teaching interests are within the arts, digital practice, sustainability and social regenerative areas. Using design and art as a creative force for positive outcomes and change. Peter has further interests in innovation through teaching and regeneration through art, architecture and design.

Staff serving as external examiners

External Examiner for Middlesex University: MA Design, MA Interior Architecture and MA Graphics.
External Reviewer BIAD Design
External Examiner for Grays Aberdeen University: BA Fine Art/Design

Research interests

Peter’s research interests are transdisciplinary, they form hybrid connections to design, art and architecture and other creative disciplines. Focused interests include, notions of place, in terms of transformation, identity and memory and particularly the understanding of data. The rapid technological development needs design and designers who raise investigative and critical questions about technological and societal development, and who contribute to developing and proposing concrete solutions about what kind of an increasingly digital world we want to live in.

Digitisation has become an integrated part of our lives and society. Design in a post-industrial era is no longer only about the material form, but also about design in immaterial and cross-material contexts. We are witnessing a shift from traditional industrial design to a design space where computational interaction and product design are increasingly prevalent, and where products are created, produced, distributed and consumed in new ways – through new service layers and contexts, and via new interfaces – from the visual to the graphical to the tactile, from the functional to the playful and playable. Design is no longer a case of either/or, but of both/and – and to an increasing extent, we have to see the digital as a material on a par with physical materiality.

Research groups

• Arts Research
• Design Knowledge
• i-DAT (Institute of Digital Art & Technology)
• Message: communication arts research

Other research

Peter’s research concerns reflect the multiple contexts of art and design as it has evolved through the twentieth century and into the twentieth first century. The research reflects a high level of relativism, contextualization and pragmatism. He has published on the nature of creativity/drawing/and the design process; the new practices emerging in sustainable design debates and how this relates to the education for design and its relationship to universities, cities, markets and business. He is interested in ideas of personal identity/how this contributes to place-making, artifact manufacture and the understanding of heritage, through the industrial and post-industrial ages. He is currently exploring digital processes through 3Dscanning and how this data can be transformed into new and exciting area’s pf practice. He also works outside the university in other sectors, schools, forums, councils and institutions.

Research degrees awarded to supervised students

 Peter has completed many supervisions for MRes students, Post Graduate Design students and has completions for PhD's. 

Grants & contracts

Peter has completed research fellowships for CSF funded by HEFC and has been awarded funding from the excellence cluster for innovative work in schools and the connection to universities. Grants in Sustainability and Resilience in Art and Design and has worked on many funding applications. A fellowship for the South West Technology Partnership in data was completed in 2021.

Creative practice & artistic projects

www.quinndavis.uk

Conferences organised

• All Our Futures 2 with the kind support of CSF at the University of Plymouth.
• Cabinet: 'The Role of Museums and Universities' UOP May 2011.
• EAD 'Academy of Design' Sweden Sept 2012.
• Design Critical Messages (with Sarah Teasley (RCA/V&A) 2015: Plymouth.
• The Role of Value in Design alongside ENVELOPE 2016: Plymouth.

Other academic activities