Elio
Caccavale
Professor of Transdisciplinary Design Innovation
School of Innovation and Technology
biography
Elio Caccavale is Professor of Transdisciplinary Design Innovation. His teaching practice, scholarship, and research explore the ethical, social, and environmental dimensions of scientific knowledge and emerging technologies, with a particular focus on human–non-human relationships.
He is the co-editor, with Professor Gordon Hush, of Design Beyond the Human: Transdisciplinary Conversations About the Planet (Bloomsbury, 2026) and Digital Design for Planetary Care: The Hidden Environmental Cost of the Digital World (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). Together, these volumes bring together international scholars, designers, and engaged citizens to examine how design might respond to the ethical, social, environmental, and political challenges of contemporary life, from more-than-human relationships and ecological responsibility to the hidden environmental costs of digital systems and economies.
His research has been disseminated internationally through major museums and cultural institutions, including the Beijing Industrial Design Centre (Beijing, China), the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), the Centro Cultural Palacio de La Moneda (Santiago, Chile), the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Bilbao, Spain), the Israel Museum (Jerusalem, Israel), the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts (Lausanne, Switzerland), the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taipei, Taiwan), the Royal Institution (London, UK), the Science Museum (London, UK), the Tianjin Art Museum (Tianjin, China), the Triennale Design Museum (Milan, Italy), and the V&A Waterfront (Cape Town, South Africa).
The Museum of Modern Art in New York has acquired his work for its permanent design collection, recognising its originality, significance, and contribution to practice-based design research.
His previous academic roles include Associate and Visiting Lectureships at Central Saint Martins (2003–2007), the Royal College of Art (2005–2011), and London Metropolitan University (2005–2006); Lecturer and Programme Lead at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (2009–2011); and Visiting Technical Lecturer at the Architectural Association (2003–2005). He has also held research appointments as Visiting Research Fellow at Imperial College London’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering and at the University of Reading’s Cybernetics Department (both 2007–2009), and as Design Researcher at Newcastle University’s Policy, Ethics, and Life Sciences Research Centre (2007–2008). In addition, Elio served as Honorary Professor at Hubei University of Technology, China (2011–2016), and Visiting Professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy (2012–2014).
Elio has served as a peer reviewer for numerous conferences, symposiums, and publishers. Most recently, he has reviewed for Bloomsbury, Routledge, The Design Journal, and the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (DEFSA) 2025 Conference.
Elio is a Fellow of Advance HE (FHEA).
Research interests
Elio’s teaching and research engage with a range of interconnected themes across interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, science and society, STEAM education, emerging scientific knowledge and technologies, more-than-human design, planetary care, environmental humanities, and environmental education.
PGR supervision interests
Interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, science and society, STEAM education, emerging scientific knowledge and technologies, more-than-human design, planetary conversations, environmental humanities, and environmental education.
Current PGR students
Marissa Cummings, Caring Object: Trauma-Informed Co-Design of Digital Harm Reduction for People with Experience of Substance Use
Dr Cara Broadley, Lead Supervisor; Professor Elio Caccavale, Second Supervisor.
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