Associate Professor Mick Douglas

Recent research has explored inter-relationships between aesthetic experiences of mobility and hospitality, cultural change practices and sustainable transport in global cities. This includes a number of international art/transport projects including ‘W-11 Tram’ first commissioned by the cultural festival of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games; tramjatra: imagining Melbourne and Kolkata by tramways; a variety of pedal-power based projects; and ‘LiveHouse’, a mobile performance platform exploring contemporary cosmopolitanism.

Postgraduate research supervision

Supervision is offered for creative practice enquiries into art, design and performance - particularly into socially engaged art and design; art and the public realm; performance and live art; practices that engage with mobility; inter-cultural creative arts practice; social innovation and sustainable mobility through arts practice; and transdisciplinary creative process.

Candidates are invited to join seminars and events offered in performative creative practice research.

Current PhD supervision:

• Performative Hermeneutics, Ceri Hann

• Designed Interventions: a toolkit for practicing, advocating and teaching socio-sustainability design, Leyla Acaroglu

• Fashioning Situations: affecting fashion and everyday life, Adele Varcoe

• Embracing Imminence: Landscape as intermediate condition, Kate Church

• Sharing Abundance: Urban food production and social change, Juliette Anich

• A feeling for place, Kathy Waghorn

• Architecture as performative agent, Campbell Drake

Completions:

• ?interior, PhD by project, Suzie Attiwill, 2013.

• Gleaning Potential, Master of Design by project, Simon Lloyd 2009.

• Engaging Space: a practice of arranging, Master of Design by project, Sharn Lim 2007, (commended by examination process as being ‘at highest standard and at the forefront internationally in its field’).

• Scenarios for the public bicycle in Melbourne, Master of Design by project, Ban Hsi Liu, 2005. (1st Prize Bicycle Victoria Research Award 2006)

• Susbaba: (design of portable energy and a new role of environmental advocacy for backpackers) Master of Design by project, Ori BenZvi, 2005. (awarded 2nd prize in Utopia 04 international design competition, Paris).

• Contemplative chambers: the design of semi-immersive virtual reality environments, Master of Design by project, Jonathon Duckworth 2002 (received RMIT Research Award 2002)

• The role of the Organic in Industrial Design, Master of Design by thesis, Kathy Fox 2002

Research consultancy

Includes City of Melbourne, Centre for Appropriate Technology Alice Springs, Melbourne Water, Lonely Planet Publishing

Creative practice research website

www.mickdouglas.net

• Creative practice-based research in socially-engaged public art, performance and mobility, sustainable mobility, inter-cultural creative practice and creative writing

• Supervisor of creative practice-based postgraduate student research; convenor of performative creative practice research postgraduate group

• Teaching/coordinating undergraduate courses in creative studies, social and sustainable design. Design Action Program workplace learning.

• PhD MA BA (RMIT)

2015   Organising committee member - Peformance Studies International
2011   Co-founder, Performing Mobilities Network
2007–2009   Chair, Arts Victoria Annual Operations Committee
2007–2009   Member, City of Melbourne Public Art Advisory Group
2007   Co-founder, Urban Interior research group
1997   Founder, Tramtactic arts projects group

Awards and grants

$450k of grants from 2000–2011 funded by Australia Council for the Arts, City of Melbourne, VicHealth, Arts Victoria, Yarra Trams, Victorian Multicultural Commission, Australia-India Council, Victorian Government Department of Infrastructure

Public presentations

Includes at School of Performance Studies, Roehampton University London; Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College University of London; Theatre Studies, University of Utrecht; Deakin Innovation lecture, Melbourne Town Hall; State of Design Festival, Melbourne; Australia Centre, University of Melbourne; Doors of Perception, India Habitat Centre, Delhi; Department of Visual Studies, University of Karachi; Visual Art, Design and Multimedia Department, Victoria University; Sidney Myer Asia Centre Melbourne; SARAI Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi; Doors of Perception, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad; Doors of Perception, Amsterdam; Politechnico di Milano; Curtin University, Perth; University of New South Wales, Sydney; Max Mueller Bhavan, Calcutta.