Aidan Rowe

Associate Professor, Design Studies
Chair, Department of Art & Design

Office: 3-77A Fine Arts Building
(780) 492-8591
aidan.rowe@ualberta.ca

Areas of Teaching and Research

Design for Health, Design Education, Design Theory, Critical Design, Design Futures, Systemic Design, Information Design, Curatorial Practice

Biography

MA, Hypermedia Arts, University of Westminster, UK, 2001
Master of Research, Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2008

Aidan Rowe is an Associate Professor in Design Studies, Department of Art & Design at the University of Alberta (Canada), where he teaches design theory, research and practice to undergraduate and graduate students. He is active in design, consulting and research work in the areas of: design pedagogy; critical design; information visualisation, related to social media; and the role that culture, collaboration and communication play in design, in and for, the 21st century. He has presented his research, taught design and curated exhibitions in Canada, Europe and Asia. His research and design work has been documented in numerous publications and exhibitions.

His research centres on three related areas: design education; curatorial design practice; and, information visualisation. His pedagogic research focuses on the improvement of design education. Taking a critical look at how design is taught has driven much of his research and he has examined how design education can both reflect new possibilities afforded to design and help prepare designers to be the engaged and active citizens needed currently. He has led numerous research projects examining how new collaboration and communication possibilities, primarily through social technologies, are beneficial to design education. His curatorial practice examines how exhibition space can serve as manifestations, moments in time, that bring together a variety of work, media and approaches that interrogate a particular theme revealing connections between work, exhibitor, theme and viewer. He has curated and designed exhibitions in Canada, Korea, Japan, Germany and the UK. His research on visualisation has focused upon the creation of tools and processes to help users better understand the increasing amounts of information that surround us. With a focus on social media technologies, and the information they produce, he has created a variety of prototypes that explore how we can better understand and reveal the information. He has published and presented his research on information visualisation internationally.

View curriculum vitae.