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Dr Liz Brogden is a Senior Lecturer and researcher in the UQ School of Architecture, Design and Planning. Through her work, she advances climate action and sustainability in architecture by leveraging shared goals across university education, professional development and training, and government initiatives. Liz is an advocate for architecture education as a driver of lifelong learning, advanced professional capabilities and collaborative partnerships that build climate agency and sustainability outcomes across the profession. With over ten years of experience designing and delivering climate-, resilience- and sustainability-focused education, Liz has worked from undergraduate through to master’s level programs and led projects in interdisciplinary curriculum development and professional development education. Her teaching and leadership excellence have been recognised with a Faculty Leadership Excellence award at UQ, two Vice-Chancellor Awards at QUT, and, as part of the team that was awarded the overall QS Reimagine Global Education Award in 2021. A 2022 Churchill Fellow and recipient of the Australian Institute of Architects 2026 National Leadership in Sustainability prize, Liz is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She currently serves on the National Education Committee of the Australian Institute of Architects and as Chair of the Education Committee for its Queensland State Chapter.

Dr Charlotte Kessler is a transdisciplinary Design Researcher and Lecturer in Design. She sees design as a powerful change-making tool relevant to addressing complex issues, and applicable across a variety of contexts.

Charlotte holds a Bachelor & Master in Product & Service Design (ENSAAMA & Ecole Boulle, France), a Master in Design Futures (Griffith University), and a PHD (Queensland University of Technology) completed in 2022. Her thesis, Developing curricula that equip designers with capabilities to enact sustainable futures: A matter of ethos, draws from the voices of academics and graduate designers from four sustainability-focused design programs internationally to propose theoretical guidelines supporting design educators to develop, enable and sustain design programs that are responsive to a rapidly changing world, in turn equipping design graduates with relevant capabilities to create change towards sustainable futures.

Charlotte has worked on a range of sustainability-focused design and design research projects internationally. Her research is situated at the nexus between design, education, and sustainability. She believes that design education has an important role to play in situating design as key, change-making practice, in the context of sustainability transitions. She is interested in research that informs academics as they develop and implement sustainability-centred curricula and pedagogies, and that supports sustainability transitions in design practice. Charlotte has recently become involved in a research project on climate literacy in architecture in partnership with the Australian Institute of Architects, and the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia.

Charlotte is currently working as Lecturer in Design in the School of Architecture, Design, and Planning at The University of Queensland. Previously, she was the Program Convenor for Design and Educational Design Lead at Griffith College, where she coordinated the accreditation and curriculum development processes for the new design program. Charlotte has developed and coordinated sustainability-focused higher education courses in the design field across multiple universities. She has taught in award winning courses including Impact Lab 3 Studio - Planet (QUT) awarded Vice Chancellor Award for Excellence and Wharton - QS (London) Re-Imagine Education Award for Design for Transformative learning through transdisciplinary collaborations, along with the Spatial History Unit awarded QUT Faculty of Creative Industries Teaching Award for Teaching Innovation and Excellence. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). She specialises in developing sustainability-centred Higher Education curricula and professional development resources for academic staff.