Phoebe Whitman

Dr Phoebe Whitman is a senior lecturer and spatial practitioner. She is the Program Manager of the Bachelor of Interior Design (Honours) program at the School of Architecture and Urban Design.

Phoebe's creative research practice unfolds through interventions, installations and teaching. Engaging with sites and situations through observation, intervention, and re-presentation, her practice considers surfaces as dynamic sites where human and more-than-human forces converge. Her work explores how surfaces are sites where entanglements between bodies, ecologies, and matter transpire through open-ended, emergent processes shaped by the agencies of both organic and non-organic conditions. Through research, site responsiveness, material-led exploration, and arrangement, her work aims to incite encounters that provoke and embrace materiality to bring attention to temporalities and a world of forces. 

Phoebe completed a BA in Fine Art (Honours) (1999), a BD in Interior Design (Honours) (2005) at RMIT University, and a PhD by Project titled 'Surface Encounter' at RMIT University (2021).

In 2011, Phoebe received two awards from RMIT - one for Innovation in Curricula, Learning & Teaching and an award for the First Year Experience. In 2012, she was awarded for participating in the RMIT Peer Partnerships in the School of Architecture & Design, Higher Education, RMIT University.

Phoebe is the executive director of IDEA–Interior Design, Interior Architecture Educators Association of Australia and New Zealand, where she continues to make significant contributions to the field of interior design education.