A Pioneer in Design Research: In Memory of Professor Rachel Cooper

Sometimes there are people who achieve extraordinary things and are extraordinary themselves. When they leave, it hurts twice as much. We mourn the passing of Professor Rachel Cooper OBE, a deeply influential figure in design research whose legacy reshaped how design is understood across academia, policy, industry, and society. As Distinguished Professor of Design Management and Policy at Lancaster University and founding director of the Imagination Lancaster centre, she built an inter-disciplinary, design-led research environment of global renown. Her visionary leadership inspired a community of scholars exploring design, design policy, socially responsible design, urban sustainability, wellbeing and design against crime, all while supervising numerous PhD candidates with her characteristic warmth and encouragement.

Her prolific output includes seminal books such as Designing Sustainable Cities (2009), The Handbook of Wellbeing and the Environment, Living in Digital Worlds, and Design for Global Challenges and Goals (as series editor for Routledge’s Design for Social Responsibility), Design for Global Challenges and Goals (2023), Design for Education: Spaces and Tools for Learning (2024). Together with Martin Press she co‑authored The Design Experience (2003), which articulated a powerful new theoretical model of the designer as craft-maker, cultural intermediary and entrepreneurial meaning‑maker in contemporary society.

Among her hallmark research programmes were Liveable Cities, a six‑year, £5 million initiative advancing low‑carbon, resource‑secure cities prioritising societal wellbeing, and The Creative Exchange, a three‑year £3 million project exploring digital public space and novel PhD training approaches; she also led Lancaster’s contribution to the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence focused on the safe and socially responsible development of IoT technologies.

Her service extended far beyond her own institution: as President of the Design Research Society she helped elevate design research internationally; she was founding editor of The Design Journal and founding President of the European Academy of Design; she served on numerous advisory and funding bodies including the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council, EPSRC panels on crime, ageing research and mobile health; she chaired UK design policy initiatives and contributed to EU-level leadership boards; and in 2015 she was awarded the Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education in recognition of her pioneering academic impact.

Colleagues and students remember her not only as a rigorous and visionary researcher but as an unfailingly kind, approachable and pragmatic mentor. She had a ready sense of humour that put students at ease, a practical mindset that brought conceptual thinking into real-world application, and an abiding generosity in time, encouragement and open-hearted collaboration.

In 2023 she received Honorary Membership of the Faculty of Public Health in recognition of her unique contributions to public health through design research, a testament to her influence beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Professor Rachel Cooper’s legacy endures in the hundreds of research outputs and PhD stories she shaped, in the policy frameworks she informed, and in the numerous lives—academic, professional, personal—touched by her warm, humorous, and deeply pragmatic spirit. We honour and remember a true pioneer whose impact will endure for generations in design research and beyond.

Thank you, Rachel!