CORE TEAM

Daniela Petrelli

Daniela Petrelli is Professor of Interaction Design and co-director of the Digital Materiality Lab. Her research interests focus on novel forms of interaction design that combine digital technology with product design. Past research topics include multimedia and multilingual information access, intelligent user interfaces, personalisation, data visualization and visual analytics.

d.petrelli@shu.ac.uk

Alessandro Soranzo

Dr Soranzo is a Reader in Psychology (department of Psychology, Sociology, and Politics). His expertise is in human perception, mostly visual perception and optical illusions. Dr Soranzo’s collaboration with DML focusses on the perception of hybrid objects that display autonomous behaviours and on how the sense of touch combines with the sense of sight. Current research with DML is extending towards the perception of hybrid materials.

a.soranzo@shu.ac.uk

Jeremy Lee

Jeremy Lee is a Principal lecturer at the Media Arts and Communications department. His research enquiry is focused on how scanning technologies can be used as new ways of seeing and interacting with an audience. Jeremy’s interest lies in the machine eye and the omnipresence these technologies enable but shifting from a traditionally scientific discourse to one that is artistic. His interest is in visualising areas that are not normally seen by the public to investigate questions of interactivity, immersiveness, viewing and access alongside the questioning of how these new processes might change the viewer’s perception and appreciation of landscapes, spaces and artefacts.

Nick Dulake

Nick Dulake is a Senior Industrial Designer at Sheffield Hallam University and co-director of the Digital Materiality Lab . He has more than 20 years of experiences, applying a user centred and co-design methodology approach to create innovative design solutions. He applies technical and creative design methods and developing interventions with a focus on digital tangible interactions.

n.dulake@shu.ac.uk

Nantia Koulidou

Dr Koulidou is a senior lecturer in BA (Hons) Jewellery, Materials and Design. Her design research practice explores and reconsiders digital jewellery as objects that combines art jewellery practices and digital technology in personally meaningful ways. Following a Research through Design approach, she creates her own links between autobiographical experiences and craft methodologies. She has background in architecture, silversmithing and participatory design.
More on her can be found at her personal website

k.koulidou@shu.ac.uk

Christoph Zellweger

Christoph Zellweger is Professor of Art and Design at the Art, Design and Media Research Centre. His interdisciplinary research enquiries become tangible as speculative objects, jewellery, wearables or interactive displays. His research interests focus on human rituals, social obsessions, the construction of human identity, bodily integrity, digital corporeal reality - and a necessarily critical view on a world increasingly shaped by humans.

edu@christophzellweger.com

RESEARCHERS

Vanessa Cesario

(visiting PhD student)

I am a communication and cultural manager and also a UX designer. I am currently finishing my PhD in Digital Media at the University of Porto and I am based at the Interactive Technologies Institute in the island of Madeira (both institutions are in Portugal). My research explores how co-design and digital technologies can facilitate natural history museums in creating engaging experiences for teenagers (15–18 years old), especially through digital storytelling and gamification frameworks.

Full information on my work can be found at www.vanessacesario.com

Vanessa spent 2 months with us as part of her PhD

Stefano Parisi

(visiting PhD student)

I am a PhD Candidate at the Politecnico di Milano, Design Department, working in the area of Materials for Design. I deal with emerging and innovative materials such as bio-based and smart materials. My PhD research focuses on Hybrid Material Systems with embedded smart components and aims at proposing guidelines and principles to facilitate its design for meaningful experiences and users’ appreciation. I am a member of the Materials Experience Lab, and I also work as design consultant and educator. In the Digital Materiality Lab, I am involved in an experimental research on interactive artefacts and prototypes based on unconventional materials.

Stefano spent three months with us as part of his PhD.

Amon Rapp

(visiting Researcher)

I am a research fellow at the University of Torino, Italy. I am a member of the Smart Interactive Objects and Systems group and I lead the Smart Personal Technology Lab @ ICxT (Center for Innovation for Society and Territory). My main research interests are related to the exploration of theoretical and design opportunities for creating behavior change technologies and self-tracking tools, as well as of novel techniques to design gamified applications.

In winder 2018 I spent 6 months visiting the DML and working with Daniela on themes related to personal memories and the home.

Eleonora Mencarini

(visiting PhD student)

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the i3 research Unit of Fondazione Bruno Kessler, in Italy. My research interest is on wearable technology for outdoor adventure sports. I have been visiting the Digital Materiality Lab as a PhD student first (in 2016 and 2017) and then as a visiting researcher at Design Futures (in 2018). Furthermore, in 2017 I have been a student volunteer at the ECSCW conference, which took place at SHU.

My PhD focussed on wearable technology for climbers and at DML I explored possible different design concepts for different parts of the body on the bases of earlier ethnographic studies.

During my internship at Design Futures, I worked on the concepts and developed a prototype of a new wearable device. During this internship I also collaborated with DF colleagues on a number of design projects.

You can find more info about my research here: https://eleonoramencarini.wordpress.com/

Daniele Duranti

(visiting PhD student)

My expertise is in digital humanities that I pursued in my Bachelor and Master Degrees. As part of my PhD I was at the DML several times as visiting researcher and I collaborated with the meSch team in two studies connected to two exhibitions the Atlantic Wall and ”Voices from the Past”

My PhD focussed on Interaction Design applied to museums and cultural heritage sites, specifically on the study of technologies that combine the material and digital as support to the visiting experience (tangible and embodied interaction).

During my PhD I also collaborated with the School of Design at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

I am currently at GruppoMeta (Pisa, Italy), a company specialised in digital technologies applied to cultural heritage and digital publishing.

Elena Molinari

I am a visiting Erasmus+ student from the University of Trento. I spent three months inSheffield, working on an embodied interaction project focused on the Sheffield GeneralCemetery. The aim of the interaction was to make a visit to the Cemetery more engaging,targeting families with young children.In Trento, I study Information and Communication Technologies, and I will graduate in 2020.The fields I am most interested in are User Experience Design and Interaction Design.

PhD STUDENTS

Hannah Taylor

I am a PhD candidate at Sheffield Hallam working on new ways to create interactive interpretation for heritage institutions in partnership with English Heritage. As part of this partnership, I am working at a string of sites across Hadrian’s Wall. I am investigating place and space and meaning-making through chorography and deep mapping, treating the site as a palimpsest over which multiple relationships, objects and stories can be overlaid.

I have a BA in Classical Studies and an MA in Museum and Artefact Studies. I am interested in critical heritage, particularly bringing hidden and marginalised histories to light. I have previously worked on the exhibition Shattering Perceptions: Women in Archaeology at Palace Green Library, Durham, as part of the #vote100 project and written on queer narratives inside museumified houses.

Marica Grasso

In my PhD I investigate haptic and emotional sensing for well-being and self-awareness by questioning the relationship between the sense of touch and conductive materials. I use a transdisciplinary approach which considers neuroscience theories, art-practice, technology and sensorial studies.

My PhD is part of Lab4Living The 100 Year Life Project, funded by Research England.
Before joining Sheffield Hallam University I studied Fashion Design Menswear at the Royal College of Art. I’ve previously collaborated with artist, scientist, curator and stylist, for costume design, art residencies, and art-science projects. My work has been exhibited during London Design Week 2018, and it is currently showcased with the Miniartextil in Paris.

ALUMNAE AND EX-TEAM

Caroline Claisse

(PhD student)

I am currently a Research Associate in Design at Newcastle University. I have a background in art, graphic and interaction design. I developed my craft-based practice at the London College of Communication before graduating from the Royal College of Art where I became interested in inclusive and participatory design. Since then, I have conducted participatory research with diverse groups where I used my expertise to design tools for co-creation. In 2019 I completed my practice-led PhD at the Digital Materiality Lab, Sheffield Hallam University. In my PhD, I explored the potential of craft and interactive technology for museums, and engaged the local community in the process of co-creating multisensory and digitally-augmented experiences of heritage. Alongside my research, I have been teaching workshops and design-led courses at the RCA, LCC and Sheffield Hallam University. I was awarded with “Ones to Watch, Rethinking Reality” by the Design Council in 2015 and has also received funding such as grants from the Arts Council England to support my public engagement and exhibition work.

Caroline was supported in her PhD by a scholarship and her thesis can be downloaded from the SHU digital repository: Caroline Claisse (2019) The augmented house: Crafting tangible interaction in house museum. (Doctoral thesis).

http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00195

Mark T. Marshall

(Senior lecturer)

Dr Mark Marshall research focusses on the development and application of novel interface technologies to new domains such as museums, medicine, education, music performance and interactive television.
Dr Marshall has a PhD in Music Technology from McGill University (Canada) and an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of Limerick (Ireland). He collaborated with artists, musicians, designers, scientists and educators on a range of artistic and research projects exploring new ways of interacting with technology.
Dr Marshall moved to the University of Limerick in Ireland in 2020.

Callum Braines

Callum Braines was a KTP associate working on a collaboration at Infraglo. Primarily focused on research and development, the project is centres around the remote control and data acquisition of industrial burners.
Callum collaboartion with the Digital Materiality Lab is centred on developing interactive prototypes, with particular attention to the technical aspects.
Callum finished his KTP project in 2020 and now works at ARM.

Luigina Ciolfi

(Professor)

Luigina Ciolfi is Professor of Human Centred Computing. She investigates situated interaction with digital technologies, collaborative and cooperative computing, participation in design, mobility and nomadicity. She has extensive international experience in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and cultural heritage technologies. She applies qualitative methodologies for understanding domains for technology design and use and people’s lived and situated experiences of socio-technical systems.
Full information can be found at http://luiginaciolfi.net
Prof Ciolfi moved to University College Cork in Ireland in 2020.