Dr Iryna Kuksa

Iryna Kuksa is a Senior Research Fellow and one of the leading researchers working at the intersection of design, AI ethics, and sustainable consumption. She is the founder of Design for Personalisation theory and the originator of the Green Personalisation research agenda; a body of work that is reshaping how we think about algorithmic systems, moral responsibility, and the future of consumption.

Her research is practice-based and purposefully outward-facing, developed through sustained partnerships with the industry and civil society. Her current AHRC Innovation Scholars in Design award embeds her expertise in live debates around Consumer Duty and responsible AI in financial services.

Inside NTU, Iryna is a committed community builder. Since 2014, she has convened the Art & Design Early Career Researcher Group; growing it from an informal peer network to a thriving initiative with an annual budget to support and develop new research talent. She founded the ‘Creative Innovation Across Disciplines’ guest seminar series in 2015, which continues to bring world-class thinkers to NTU and forge new national and international collaborations.

Iryna is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Visiting Scholar alumna of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and a committed champion of diversity, equity, and inclusion across academia and beyond.

Iryna regularly contributes to academic peer-review and internal REF review and represents the School on various committees. She is the Lead of Design Research cluster which is a key part of the Research Centre for Creative Industries at NSAD. Most recently, Iryna helped found and acts as the Interdisciplinary Design Lead of the Picturing Climate Network.

Over the years, Iryna has developed a strong multidisciplinary background that enables her to make creative links between divergent fields of knowledge and creative practice. She has a demonstrable ability of project management, strong publication output, and a growing number of successful collaborations across disciplines and borders. She trained as a researcher at three of the UK’s top universities (Oxford, LSE, and Warwick) and has been a proud recipient of prestigious, highly competitive academic awards and visiting appointments.

Iryna has made original and internationally recognised contributions to her discipline, as demonstrated by her four books: Making Sense of Space (Elsevier, 2014), Design for Personalisation (Routledge, 2017), Understanding Personalisation: New Aspects of Design and Consumption (Elsevier, 2022), and the forthcoming Design, Consumption and Personal Ethics in the Age of AI (Routledge, commissioned for 2027).

As the pioneer of the Green Personalisation research agenda, Iryna’s work is increasingly recognised at the interface of design, responsible use of AI, and sustainable consumption. Her current research supported by AHRC and UKRI (£1.3M) is firmly embedded in live regulatory and industry contexts and complements the government’s commitment to make Britain the world’s leading destination for creative industries and responsible AI innovation.

Iryna studied for a PhD at the University of Warwick.

Iryna’s research in design, personalisation, AI ethics, and sustainable consumption is recognised and valued by the international academic community, as demonstrated by the following achievements:

• Elected Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts

• AHRC Innovation Scholars in Design Award (APP24952): secondment to Nile, Edinburgh, working on Consumer Duty implementation and responsible AI in financial services (2025–2027)

• Peer Reviewer, AHRC Green Transitions Ecosystem Scheme (from 2023)

• Member of the REPHRAIN College of Peer Reviewers. REPHRAIN is the UKRI endorsed National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (2021–2024)

• Guest reviewer for MA Design Engineering, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard University (from 2019)

• Visiting Scholar at The Graduate School of Design, Harvard University (2019–2020)

• Invited Speaker, 3rd International Symposium on AI in Fashion, University of the Arts London (June 2026)

• Invited Speaker, Regenerative Futures Institute, RMIT Melbourne (December 2026)

• Invited Speaker, 2nd International Symposium on Fashion and AI, London College of Fashion, UAL (June 2025)

• Peer-Reviewer (Elsevier, Common Ground Publishing, EPSRC, UKRI)

• Visiting Senior Fellow at Staffordshire University (2011–2014)

• Reviews Editor for Scene (Intellect) (2013–2014)

• Award of Harry Ransom Fellowship (2012)

• Request to use Iryna’s research outputs for the Norman Bel Geddes’ permanent collection at the Harry Ransom Centre, University of Texas in Austin

• Display of her 3D visualisation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy designed by Norman Bel Geddes in 1921 as part of the ‘I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America’ exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center (2012–2013)

• Integration of her PhD project (Set-SPECTRUM) into the teaching curriculum of three universities (University of Warwick, University of Hull, and Edge Hill University)

Industry partners:  Nile (strategic design consultancy, Edinburgh); Financial Conduct Authority (FCA); Money Advice Trust; Scottish Financial Enterprise.

Academic and civil society partners:  Prof Martin Bechthold, Kumagai Professor of Architectural Technology and Director of the GSD’s Technology Platform, The Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; Prof Harry West, Professor of Practice at Design Engineering, Columbia University; Dr Mark Kosumovic, Senior Lecturer in Photography and Video, De Montford University; Picturing Climate Network (PCN); Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

NTU collaborators:  Prof Tony Kent, Prof Xiao Ma, Prof David Brown, Prof Benachir Medjdoub, Prof Amanda Briggs-Goode.

Sponsors: AHRC Innovation Scholar in Design: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FZ507155%2F1

UKRI CRCRM Entrepreneurship, Art, and Science for Environmental Sustainability (EASE): https://www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us/news/news-articles/2026/03/project-will-make-climate-research-more-accessible

Information for Prospective Research Students

Iryna’s areas of interest are design for personalisation, green personalisation, AI ethics, responsible consumption, sustainable design and digital wellbeing. She also supervises research in immersive virtual environments, social media, and health motivation technologies.