UTS Design Architecture & Building’s expert supervisors can guide students to the completion of either a masters by research degree or a doctorate.
Finding the right supervisor can be a daunting task so please contact our research staff. They will work with you to understand your proposed research topic and put you in touch with one or more of our academics. Students may work under the guidance of a single supervisor or a co-supervision model.
Design supervisors
Dr Andrew Burrell
Andrew Burrell supervises practice-based and traditional scholarly researchers who are investigating the affordances of virtual and digitally mediated environments to visualise information. He is interested in the way memory and imagination mediate experiences of said environments, and how narrative and world building play central roles in this process. Research theme: Visual Knowledges.
Associate Professor Alexandra Crosby
Alexandra Crosby supervises research projects on Intersectional Design Histories and Theories as well as on Material Ecologies, particularly when they include emerging forms of activism. She has expertise in ethnographic and participatory design research methods.
Associate Professor Cherine Fahd
Cherine Fahd supervises projects on the intersubjective and embodied experience of making and performing for the camera; image and politics; representation, race and gender; image activism and expanded image-based practice. Fahd is experienced in supervising creative practice-based research as well as traditional research projects.
Akira Isogawa
Akira Isogawa is one of Australia's greatest living fashion designers, known internationally for his brand Akira, he is one of the few Australian designers to exhibit and sell his designs in Paris. In 2018-2019 Sydney's Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences showed the retrospective simply titled: Akira Isogawa. His work was also included in the Victoria and Albert Museum's 2020 exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk in London. Akira supervises practice-based fashion design research projects.
Associate Professor Jacqueline Gothe
Jacqueline Gothe supervises practice-led research in visual communication design using a ‘research through design’ methodology. Her focus is on the specificity of place, recognition of situated knowledges, and the value of participatory and collaborative processes.
Dr Thomas Lee
Thomas Lee is a design theorist and researcher whose work focuses on the experiential dimensions of technology, materials and spaces. Thomas’ research practice and output aims to translate diverse and sometimes abstract perspectives from philosophy and theory into insights that readily mesh with research questions more specifically relevant to academic design practitioners and design research units.
Doris Li
Doris Li is a research leader in advanced fashion manufacturing focusing on knitwear design and technology, include functional garments, new materials, and activewear. She was a leading researcher in the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence in Design Limited (AiDLab) a research operation jointly established by Hong Kong Polytechnic University and The Royal College of Art in the U.K. She is an authority on Wholegarment knitting design and programming. She supervises research projects on fashion and technology with an emphasis on more sustainable manufacturing and design processes.
Associate Professor Jacquie Lorber-Kasunic
Jacquie Lorber-Kasunic is a design academic whose research focuses on knowledge design, information visualisation, aesthetics and data poetics. She has expertise across a range of visual, experimental, ethnographic and practice-based methodologies, with particular interest in visualisation as a method for interpretation and critical inquiry.
Research theme: Visual Knowledges
Distinguished Professor Peter McNeil FAHA
Peter McNeil leads the Imagining Fashion Futures research Lab, where inter-disciplinary researchers examine the past, present and future of critical fashion and other design topics. International collaborations include Stockholm University, Sweden and Aalto University, Finland, as well as Dressing the Early Modern Dress Network.
Associate Professor Abby Mellick Lopes
Abby Mellick Lopes supervises research in design philosophy, phenomenology, poststructuralism and social transitions, and the practice disciplines of visual communication, photography, product design and fashion. She has expertise across a range of inventive and participatory research methodologies, with particular interest in ethnographic and grounded practice and engaged social research.
Dr Sara Oscar
Sara Oscar supervises practice-based researchers in the field of photography and visual culture. Her areas of expertise are in photography and memory studies, from theories of the archive to trauma and post-memory. Her work considers photography and image culture in the age of extinction and the Anthropocene.
Berto Pandolfo
Berto Pandolfo’s research focuses on the application of both emerging and traditional methods to develop new approaches to complex form making. He applies his research within the context of batch production and commercialisation of designed objects in Australia.
Dr Todd Robinson
Todd Robinson supervises practice-based and scholarly researchers in fashion and interdisciplinary Doctoral and Masters by research projects. He has expertise in practice-based research in fashion and is interested in inventive research methodologies that utlise design, participation, iteration with technology. He has specific knowledge in fashion practice, fashion theory, corporeal phenomenology, affect theory, sensory ethnography, critical design and visual methods.
Dr Zoe Sadokierski
Zoe Sadokierski supervises practice-based research projects. She has expertise in publication design in the digital age, information visualisation, and research through design methodologies.
Dr Katherine Scardifield
Katherine Scardifield supervises research projects on Material Ecologies, particularly when they are driven by creative enquiries that through the relationships between material culture, material thinking and material futures. She has expertise working with practice-led methodologies in the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), both in Australia and overseas.
Associate Professor Toby Slade
Toby Slade supervises research projects on fashion theory, decoloniality, luxury, and Japanese culture. Toby is an authority on Japanese fashion and popular culture and his current research focuses on the history, contemporary forms and changing meaning of luxury in Japan, revealing shifts in definitions of social value and patterns of consumption throughout history
Dr Jesse Adams Stein
Jesse Adams Stein’s strengths are best catered to history/theory candidates in the fields of design history, design studies, material culture studies, craft studies, visual communication, print culture, design and gender, labour history, and histories of technology. Jesse has expertise in oral history interviewing, ethnographic and archival research, and visual analysis. Available to supervise Masters by Research and co-supervision for PhDs.
Professor Kate Sweetapple
Kate Sweetapple supervises visual communication design projects with a focus on data sense-making and information aesthetics.
Dr Mark Titmarsh
Mark Titmarsh is a visual artist working in painting, video and writing. He has an international reputation as an experimental and award-winning filmmaker in Europe and the Americas, while in Australia he is a significant contributor to the development of the Expanded Painting debate in the visual arts.
Professor Cameron Tonkinwise
Cameron Tonkinwise supervises projects relating to Sustainable Design, Service Design and Design for Social Justice. His current focus, in collaboration with colleagues at CMU and an international network of scholar-practitioners, is Transition Design – design-enabled multi-level, multi-stage structural change toward more sustainable futures.
Architecture supervisors
Architectural practice, culture and technology
Professor Thea Brejzek
Thea Brejzek is an internationally recognised expert in scenography, both in and beyond the context of theatre and performance design. Her research is concerned with constructions of performativity in spaces of social, cultural and political engagement.
Professor Anthony Burke
Anthony Burke’s focus is on contemporary design and theory in relation to the future of practice and technology, and its implications for the built environment. His current research is focused on the role of architecture in the innovation economy.
Dr Campbell Drake
Campbell Drake is an academic and registered architect. Drake’s current practice-based research is focused on the interactions and entanglements between urban infrastructure and socio-spatial formation within remote communities in Australia and abroad.
Urtzi Grau
Urtzi Grau, architect and founding partner of Fake Industries Architectural Agonism, leads the Masters by Research program for the School of Architecture.
Associate Professor Nimish Biloria
Nimish Biloria is an Associate Professor at the, Faculty of Design Architecture and Building at the University of Technology Sydney.
Professor Gerard Reinmuth
Gerard Reinmuth is an academic, architect, designer and director of TERROIR, an Australian practice with offices in Sydney, Hobart and Copenhagen. The practice is built upon a research culture that crosses both research by design and research into practice and the profession.
Professor Lawrence Wallen
Lawrence Wallen’s current research interests focus on spatial prototyping influenced by diverse forms of digital cultural production in the narrative and interactive elements of performance, visual art and urban space.
History and theory
Professor Charles Rice
Charles Rice is an international architectural historian, theorist and critic. His core research considers questions of the interior across art, architecture and design in the 19th and 20th century.
Landscape architecture
Professor Penelope Allan
Penelope Allan is a Professor, School of Architecture at the, Faculty of Design Architecture and Building at the University of Technology Sydney.
Professor Martin Bryant
Martin Bryant is a Professor of Landscape Architecture who researches urban resilience, urban ecology and form-making in landscapes of the South Pacific.
Built Environment supervisors
Sustainable design, development and policy
Dr Phillippa Carnemolla
Phillippa Carnemolla is an industrial designer specialising in the design and evaluation of inclusive environments, products and information. Her research investigates the breadth of health, care and social impacts resulting from inclusive design approaches, including smart cities, ageing in place and disability housing models.
Dr Pernille Christensen
Pernille Christensen’s research focuses on various aspects of sustainability in property and planning. Her doctoral research examined real estate stakeholders' conceptual understanding of sustainability and sustainable real estate and the integration of sustainability concerns into corporate strategic policy.
Associate Professor Sumita Ghosh
Sumita Ghosh’s research interests focus on applications of green infrastructure planning; sustainable urban design and performance assessments; urban morphologies and settlement planning and policy in reducing carbon footprints.
Professor Sara Wilkinson
Sara Wilkinson's research is focused on sustainability in the following areas: building adaptation; conceptual understanding; green roof retrofit from building to city scale; measuring and quantifying sustainability in the built environment; and, building user/occupant satisfaction.
Political economy, social equity and finance in property
Hera Antoniades
Hera Antoniades specialises in Forensic Trust Accounting and governance compliance for the property and legal professions. Her research includes white collar crime in trust accounting for property agencies, property taxation, forensic trust accounting, tenancy legislation, strata management and occupational licensing.
Associate Professor Janet Ge
Janet Ge’s research covers housing affordability and markets, property development finance and property investment. Her doctoral research explored multiple regression analysis and recurrent neural network methods in forecasting models for private housing prices in Hong Kong.
Dr Shanaka Herath
Shanaka Herath's research investigates urban house prices and housing affordability, urban disadvantage, and urban/regional economic development.
Dr Yongjian Ke
Yongjian Ke is a Senior Lecturer in Project Management in the School of Built Environment at UTS. Placing emphasis on the implicit rather than the explicit where contracts between professionals and patrons are concerned, Dr Yongjian Ke is seeking to ensure the longevity, safety, and productivity of Asia Pacific's burgeoning construction industry.
Associate Professor Vince Mangioni
Vince Mangioni’s research focuses on local government funding and finance, including land tax; compulsory acquisition of land; valuation; and, tenancy and property management. His PhD examined taxation with a focus on the rating and taxing of land.
Associate Professor Song Shi
Song Shi’s research interest and expertise are in real estate economics and finance.
Innovation in construction management, materials and technology
Distinguished Professor Martin Loosemore
Martin Loosemore is Professor of Construction Management in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at UTS, He is an award-winning and influential researcher whose work focuses on maximising the positive social impact of the construction and infrastructure industry.
Professor Sidney Newton
Sidney Newtonis Research Centre Director, School of the Built Environment at the, Faculty of Design Architecture and Building at the University of Technology Sydney.
Associate Professor Peter Smith
Peter Smith specialises in international research into Project Cost Management practices and the implementation of leading edge digital technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the construction industry. The focus of this research is on addressing the global problem of project cost overruns.
Associate Professor Johnny Wong
Johnny Wong’s research is focused on the digital transformation in the construction industry in the following areas: 5D BIM, automation, visualisation, machine learning, image processing.
Project management theory and practice
Professor Shankar Sankaran
Shankar Sankaran’s research focuses on organisational project management, megaprojects, systems thinking and action research. Key topics include: leadership and project governance, soft systems methodology, and linking theory and practice.
Professor Catherine Killen
Catherine Killen conducts research on the management of innovation and projects with a focus on project portfolio management. Her current research themes include the relationship between strategy and the project portfolio, and organisational project management.
Dr Leila Moslemi Naeni
Leila Moslemi Naeni's research has won several awards for applied research in project management and computer science. Recently, she won the Project Management Research Award (PMAA) of 2016 from Australia Project Management Institute (AIPM) - NSW.