Staff profiles

• Visual Arts
• Product Design

Tom’s background is in Fine Art, Design and Sociology.  Having worked as a designer and maker of furniture and led an MA in Art and Design he wrote his PhD on the role of plastic materials in consumption experiences, in the sociology department at the University of York. 

His current research centres broadly on human/object relationships and his research, research supervision and consultancy engage with the materiality of everyday experiences and particularly their relationship to the design of objects.  This includes specific interactions with materials in craft and design processes and in consumption as well as the larger scale consequences of these interactions for the sustainability of contemporary patterns of consumption.

Tom’s interest in consumption stems from his experience as a designer and his perspective is informed by sociological and anthropological approaches to the subject.

2006–present
My Exhibition - Designing for Affective Communication, Personalisation and Social Experience, funded under the AHRC/ ESRC ‘Designing for the twenty first century’ programme.
Partners:

• Professor Chris Rust
• Professor Peter Wright
• Mr Jeff Baggott (Sheffield Hallam, Design)
• Dr Alison McKay (Leeds, Computer Science)
• Professor Sharon MacDonald (Sheffield, Sociological studies)
• Dr Daniela Romano (Sheffield, Computer Science)
• Dr Serge Sharoff (Leeds, Modern Language and Culture)
• Dr Daniela Petrelli (Sheffield, Information Studies.

The project aims to develop and evaluate principles for designing for personalisation using "ambient" techniques and affective communication in a large scale interdisciplinary design and research exercise for a museum exhibition in 2008.

2004–2005
AHRC funded Research Training Network with University of Lincoln, Leeds Metropolitan University, Sheffield Hallam University, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Coventry, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.  This network resulted in the creation of ADIT (Art and Design Index to Theses) an online searchable database of completed PhDs in Art and Design.  The database has been adopted by Cambridge Scientific Abstracts.

• Member of the Design Research Society (DRS); convener of DRS Special Interest Group ‘Emotion, Experience and Interaction’.
• Invited speaker to the Arts Institute, Bournemouth Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) funded Plastics Specialist Subject Network (SSN).
• External member of the Faculty Research Degrees Board, Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design, University of Lincoln.
• External examiner MRes in Art, Architecture and Design, Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design, University of Lincoln.

Tom is currently supervising PhDs related to the following topics:

• Consumers' understanding of sustainability
• Clothing and self-identity
• Positive experiences and graphic design
• The basis for feelings of desire for objects. 

He would welcome enquiries from prospective students for projects that cross between art and design and everyday life, including those where art and design practice forms part of the methodology.