Sharon Baurley

I am Professor of Design & Materials, and Director of the Materials Science Research Centre at the Royal College of Art in London, UK. Since 2018, I have been leading the delivery of this major part of the RCA's strategy.

I am very experienced in leading and managing academic programmes and departments in both Art & Design and in inter-disciplinary environments, including all aspects of quality assurance, programme and curriculum development, strategy and planning, and executive functions. I am a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy.

I have a history of leading and managing UK research council-funded projects, and a track record of conceptualising and directing inter-disciplinary research involving academic-industry partnerships. I employ synthetic thinking to pull together disparate concepts to specify research spaces. I am very interested in evolving approaches to couple methodology from different disciplines – HCI, drama, sensory science, psychophysics, engineering, materials science – with design methods to enhance understanding of human culture and the human condition and to apply this to different contexts (user innovation, sustainable consumption).

My research is focused on the circular economy and advanced inter-disciplinary human-centred design methods to explore new ‘Product Cultures’ and the social and materials systems they inhabit, as a strategy for post-Industrial Design in the age of the Anthropocene, that de-couple the use of materials resources from economic development, in the context of the 'Fab City' (http://fab.city), where cities are locally productive whilst being globally connected.

Up until March 2025, I was one of the centre directors in the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) Programme - a four-year £30 million investment from UKRI to move the UK towards a circular economy - the Textiles Circularity Centre.

I have consulted for Courtaulds Textiles, London, Marks & Spencer, London, and Unilever, UK, and produced design work for Design Intelligence, UK.

I have been awarded numerous national and international awards for my work, including the Josef Otten Award for Technical Innovation and the Ideacomo Award for Printing and Dyeing from the Japanese Fashion Foundation.