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Tom Ainsworth is the Subject Area Lead for Architecture and Design and the MA Sustainable Design Course Leader. His supervisory interests are Social and Environmental Justices, Progressive and Disruptive Design Research, and Design for Health and Wellbeing.

Current Supervision

Chantal Spencer, University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½. Working Title: Moving Beyond Participatory Models to Methodologies of Radical Intersectional Equity. University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½ Funded Scholarship.

Fe Stevens, University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½. Working Title: Who cares? Exploring design-led research of women living with chronic pain through lived experiences and the design disparities of care.

Barry Leigh, University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½. Working Title: The Development of a methodology to Assess User Satisfaction in Response to Urban Environments.

Conferrals

Kristen Bullivant, University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½. Working Title: Designing Sustainable Food Futures: a design anthropological approach to cultural value and culinary capital in shaping ‘sustainable’ diets. AHRC funded.

Sally Sutherland, University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½. Working title: Design, Culture and Gender Matters: An Exploration of Design as a Socio-material Tool for UK Public Breastfeeding Research. AHRC Design Star funded.

Merryn Haynes-Gadd, University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½. Thesis Title: Emotional Durability Design Nine: Developing a tool for product longevity. AHRC Design Star funded.

Examinations

PhD Examination, Giovanni Marmont, University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½. Title: Nanopoetics of Use: Kinetic prefiguration and dispossessed sociality in the undercommons. AHRC Design Star funded

PhD Examination, Catherine Speight, University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½. Title: Looking Understanding and Making Meaning: HE Ceramics Students as a ‘Community of Learners’. AHRC Funded.PhD Examination, Tobias Mulling, University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½. Title: Embracing the Gestural Interface: Designing and Evaluating a Mid-air Gestural Approach based on Manipulation.

I’m interested in supervising practice-based PhDs, particularly those that are interdisciplinary and combine art practice and theory with architecture/urban studies/spatial practice alongside other disciplines and practices (and may have a socially engaged or participatory element), and which might explore themes of migration, heritage, contested space and regeneration.

Please note that I am not taking on new PhD students in the next academic year (2026-27) but can discuss supporting projects which would start in the following year (2027-28).

Completed PhD Students: 

Ilenia Atzori: From ruins to community heritage: The role of storytelling in building a collective memory

Current PhD Students:

Antony Dixon: Here is where we meet (Body, Matter and Things): A sensory investigation, through co-creative practice, of the misplaced and found.

Jessica Melville-Brown: Co-designing the future: An exploration into the development of new methods for creative engagement, examining the influence of gender roles, socio-economic and ethno-cultural factors in the co-design process with young people.

Angela Cheung: Neurological Access in the Built Environment: A Theoretical Framework and Assessment Instrument for Architectural Practice 

Reem Acason: Material Afterlives: The Re-activation of Archaeological Fragments through the Diasporic Art Practices of Contemporary SWANA Women

Simon James: Deep Listening to the Unheard: What knowledge emerges when listening with is positioned as a way of knowing the landscapes and communities of Whitehawk?

PhD Examinations: 

James O'Leary: Interface Architecture: Towards the transformation of Belfast's 'Peacewalls' through Situated Practice (Internal Examiner, UoB)

Jina Lee: Drawing ‘New Maps’: Critical Cartography and Ethnographical Enquiry Through Drawing Practice (External Examiner, UAL)

Anna Sephton: 'Who invites the archive home? Animating a 1930s queer South African photographic collection through collaborative filmmaking (Internal Examiner, UoB)

M Phil examinations:

Lida Driva: The Operation of the Hidden. Towards an understanding of architectural and urban space: the case of Omonia Square (External Examiner, University of Westminster)

• Material innovation
• Design and craft aplication and cultural value and meanings of materials 
• Plastics, polymers and composites and 'alternatives
• Reuse and recycling 

Postgraduate supervision in Textiles, Fashion, Fashion Communication, Drawing, encompassing embodied materiality, my work in handmade paper and practice-based, installation art. More recently,  substantial research as co-investigator with an AHRC project in sustainabile materials in Fashion and Textiles. I am interested in waste in the Fashion, Textiles, Accessories and Leather industries, together with materials, circular economy, reuse and repurposing.  

Recent PhD supervision:

University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½ - Claire Dawson - Research Title: 'Clothing Reuse in the Circular Econonmy: An exploration of the challenges and opportuniteis for UK high street fashion brands' - [March 2023 - July 2029]

University of Â鶹¹û¶³´«Ã½ - Martin Irorere - Research Title: 'Closing the Fashion Sustainability Gap through textile Recycling: Evaluation of UK Gen-Z consumer attitudes, knowledge, and acceptance of textile recycling'. - [March 2021 - July 2026]

Anglia Ruskin University - Amanda Lavis - Research Title: 'Woven Language: A practice-based research investigation Exploring the Textile Praxis in Children's Book Illustration' [March 2021 - expected completion 2025]

External PhD Viva examination experience, University of Chester October 2020 - Georgina Spry -  'A New Felt Presence: Making and Learning as part of a Community of Women Feltmakers' 

I have supervised and examined students relating to social and sustainable design (and the link between them), arts and wellbeing utlising practice based methods.

I welcome supporting projects that explore materials and making / materials and meaning making / material innovation, the valorisation of waste (through design and making) and circular economies. I lead research projects that engage design and making in the context of biodiversity, nature recovery, arts, health and well-being and social empowerment as well as the co-design and use of craft, design and technology in empowering disengaged and / or marginalised groups and communities in neighbourhood development and participatory planning.

My research centres around the relationship between the designed environment and the politics of action, particularly in relation to issues of embodiment and the ideology of the made world. I am interested in the history of ergonomics, the material culture of the British pub and the implications of cybernetic research. I take a transdisciplinary approach to the study of design, including methodologies such as design history, design studies, anthropology, social and cognitive psychology, and philosophy. I am interested in supervising projects concerned with design activism, social design, critical approaches to design, emotion and design, affect and design practice, the politics of design history, craft practice, and the relationship between design, craft and other disciplines.