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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.

Dr Mehrnoosh Mirzaei is an interdisciplinary designer, design researcher, and educator. She is a Lecturer in Design at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning, The University of Queensland (UQ). She holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Industrial Design from the University of Tehran, specialising in Product Design, and completed her PhD at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 2023. Her doctoral research explored the potential of experiential learning and embodiment within disaster risk reduction (DRR) education for children, using Research-through-Design and participatory methods. The study produced a three-step design model for creating child-centred, inclusive, and practitioner-friendly DRR learning frameworks. Her research is interdisciplinary, addressing complex social and environmental challenges through design-led approaches that bridge education, community resilience, and health. Mehrnoosh’s work focuses on enhancing climate adaptation, risk perception, and well-being through participatory and embodied design methods. She leads and collaborates on projects such as the Tropical Bus Stop (TAP) project and Resilient by Design, which connect design research with real-world impact across communities, local governments, and industry.

Beyond academia, Mehrnoosh has extensive professional experience as an industrial designer, with a portfolio spanning the automotive, homeware, and toy industries, and she received the Bronze A’ Design Award (2017) for her work “Escher.” She also partners with government and health organisations to develop co-design frameworks and user engagement tools, including design-driven risk awareness programs for children and healthcare system design improvements. Mehrnoosh integrates these experiences into her teaching, advancing interdisciplinary and user-centred design practice to prepare the next generation of designers for complex societal challenges.