Neal Haslem

Dr. Neal Haslem

Senior Lecturer

Details

Open to

  • Masters Research or PhD student supervision

About

Dr Neal Haslem is a lecturer and researcher in the area of Communication Design within the School of Media and Communication.

Dr Neal Haslem is a communication designer, design educator and a practice-led researcher into communication design practice. His practice involves one-to-one relationships with people, enabling futures through communication design action. Neal’s practice-led design research focuses on investigating the practise of communication design as an intersubjective action. This research is informed by continental philosophy, situated in the phenomenological and ontological understandings of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Lévinas. Neal’s work contemplates the history of philosophy and its presence revealed through the underlying assumptions implicit within contemporary design worlds. His research is both informed by, and critical of, the work of Donald Schön and his positioning of ‘reflective practice’. Neal’s practice-led research continues to investigate the conjunction of communication design and intersubjective action through projects, writing, teaching and discourse. Ultimately he aims, through design research, education and discourse, to initiate an ‘intersubjective turn’ within communication design action and research.

Neal is currently coordinating the development of the ‘Design Futures Lab’, a Mediated City project and an emerging research group within the School of Media and Communication.

Research Participation:
- Homefullness
- Slow Media Symposium
- Design Futures Lab Research Group
- PPPPP
- DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Lab Melbourne

Supervision:

- Janine Sisson, PhD candidate, Becoming sustainable through service design
- Stella Tan, PhD candidate, An investigation of expertise validation in graphic design management practice

Recent Achievements:
- 2012 International Seed Funding: Homefullness project
- 2012 Finalist Homelessness Design Challenge, RMIT University Design Research Institute (with Dr Guy Johnson, Dr Keely Macarow, Dr Mick Douglas, Dr Helen Frichot, Rochus Hinkel, Margie McKay)

Design Practice:
- Neal Haslem Design, 2001-present.
- Designer, Melbourne Museum’s Planetarium at Scienceworks, 2004
- Senior Designer, The Ball Group Pty Ltd., Melbourne. 1998–2001
- Graphic Designer, Roar Film, Hobart, 1997–1998
- Graphic Designer, G3, Hobart, 1993–1996
- Graphic Designer, Clemenger Advertising, Hobart, Design for print and press. 1991–1992
- Graphic Designer, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Tasmanian Government, 1990

Professional work and projects:

Include Me!:
A website to help conference-organisers and self-advocates participate in meetings and conferences. Produced by AFDO (The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations) in partnership with Disability Resource Centre and The Helen McPherson Trust.

Te Toa Matoa:
A media and communications workshop to develop communication materials and skills in the organisation Te Toa Matoa, the Pacific island of Kiribati's peak disability organisation. Organised by AFDO (The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations) in partnership with AusAID.

Ride-on-dinner :
- A mobile participatory performance experience that anyone can pedal. A slow meal journey served from pedal-powered vehicles over the duration of an easy early-evening cycle. A ride-on-dinner demonstrates simple pleasures in hospitality and local knowledge whilst feeling a link between human-scaled food and transport systems. Diners become co-creators riding relationships between individual human body, a temporarily collected social body and the body of the city.

Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis:
- Identity design (website, stationery, publications) for a not-for-profit incorporated association dedicated to the practice, study and teaching of psychoanalysis, the training of analysts and research in the psychoanalytic field established by Sigmund Freud and extended by Jacques Lacan.

Patternbook:
- Website design for Patternbook, part of Translation Exercises; a postgraduate project investigating language, text and textile practices by Ruth Hadlow.

Academic positions

  • Visiting International Lecturer
  • Indiana University
  • School of Fine Art
  • Bloomington, United States
  • 2008 – 2008
  • Lecturer, Visual Communication
  • University of Tasmania
  • School of Art
  • Hobart, Australia
  • 2007 – 2007
  • Lecturer
  • RMIT University
  • Communication Design
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • 2006 – Present
  • Lecturer
  • Swinburne University of Technology
  • Communication Design
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • 2003 – 2010
  • Lecturer, Communication Design
  • Swinburne University of Technology
  • School Behavioural Science (postgraduate diploma)
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • 2003 – 2006
  • Lecturer
  • Victoria University
  • Communication Design
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • 2003 – 2006
  • Lecturer
  • Victorian College of the Arts
  • Interactive Media
  • , Australia
  • 2001 – 2001
  • Lecturer
  • RMIT University
  • Graphic Design
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • 1999 – 1999

Supervisor projects

  • Understanding the impact of Speculative Design on Creative Thinking in Design Education
  • 15 Aug 2024
  • Design, Translation, Interpretation: Tacit knowledge, hermeneutics and tactics in cross cultural design communications.

  • 18 Jul 2024
  • Futures as Medium: Exploring Pluriversal Approaches to Designing with Place
  • 25 Jan 2023
  • Transilience: A Phenomenology of Leaping Across
  • 30 Jun 2020
  • Segues from memories to materiality
  • 25 Jun 2020
  • The Performative Role of Language in Social Design
  • 5 Mar 2020
  • Understandings of Professional Communication Design Expertise: a Phenomenographic Study
  • 26 Nov 2019
  • InWorlding : Narrative and Self in Creative Practice
  • 1 Apr 2019
  • Leveraging the antagonisms and sensibilities of transdisciplinary practice: A creative approach to working with difference.
  • 21 Mar 2019
  • Remaking education through design: generative communities of practice and making
  • 6 Mar 2019

Teaching interests

Communication design, graphic design, intersubjective design practice, philosophy of design, design and ethics, practice-led research, reflective practice, phenomenological practice and research.

Neal teaches into the undergraduate and postgraduate programs both within Communication Design and in interdisciplinary studios within the School of Media and Communication. He is an active researcher within the Design Research Institute flagship ‘Mediated City’. His practice-led research investigates the intersubjective in communication design practice.

Research interests

Key interests include:

- The intersubjective framing of communication design practice and its ramifications for practice, education and research
- Practice-led research in communication design
- Philosophy and ethics of Design
aboriginal flag
torres strait flag

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.