Doctor Diane Pruneau is Professor at the Université de Moncton, in Canada. Specialized in environmental education, she is the Director of the Littoral et Vie Research Group, that conducts various research projects and pedagogical interventions in environmental education. The research group’s objective is to educate adults and young people to environmental subjects to help them become aware of the state of their environment and to accomplish environmental actions. Dr Pruneau’s research programs have dealt with the understanding of the link people have with their environment, health and environmental education, climate change education, teaching science in a minority language community, sustainability competences and the use of design thinking in environmental education.

Examples: research projects

- Experimentation of a pedagogical model that facilitates the person-group-society-environment relationship

- Study of the evolution of students’ ideas on climate change

- The process of change experienced by people during the attempts at new pro-environmental behaviours

- Pedagogical strategies that improve young people’s decision making capacities in environment

- Study of environmental leaders’ competencies

- The use of design thinking for accompanying people in climate change adaptation

Oral Presentations:

Using Design Thinking and Facebook to Help Moroccan Women Adapt to Climate Change Impacts

Professor Xiaobo Lu 

Dean of Academy Arts & Design, Tsinghua University.

Dean of Tsinghua Arts & Design Institute in Milan.

Chairman of the Steering Committee for Education and Instruction for Design Majors, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China.

Teaching course:

<Design, Values and Experiences>, <Information Art and Trends of Design>

Main Academic Opinions:

The development trend of the information society will promote the fundamental reform of the design discipline, and the immaterial information will become the noumenon of the design. Under the new circumstance, it is necessary to innovate Design at all levels to maintain the continuous sustainability of this discipline. Therefore, it is necessary to reconstruct not only design methods and procedures, but also design theories, design thinking, aesthetic paradigm and design evaluation criteria.

Has been founder-director of the Product-Life Institute (Switzerland), the oldest established consultancy in Europe devoted to developing sustainable strategies and policies, since 1983. From 1986 to 2014, he was also director of risk management research of the Geneva Association. In 1971, he graduated from ETH Zurich with an MA in architecture; has been Visiting Professor, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey, since 2005; a full member of the Club of Rome since 2013. He was awarded degrees of Doctor honoris causa by the University of Surrey (2013) and l’Université de Montréal (2016). In 1982, with ‘The Product-Life Factor’, he won a Mitchell Prize in Houston, TX; In 1978, together with Peter Perutz, he won a first prize in the competition of the German Future's Society, Berlin, with a paper on unemployment, occupation and profession.His ‘corner’ books are ‘Jobs for Tomorrow, the Potential for substituting manpower for energy’ (1981) and ‘The Performance Economy’ (2010).

Spotlight on current activity:

Promoting the understanding of the structure of an economy in loops and its drivers and obstacles (circular industrial economy); spreading the knowledge about the competitiveness of a performance economy selling goods and molecules as a service; and identifying the levers to speed up the shift from a linear industrial economy managing flows to an economy managing stocks; through workshops, lectures and policy groups; member of the Coordination Group of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform of EESC and the European Commission.

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Poonam Bir Kasturi trained as an industrial designer and graduated in 1985. Her current project, called “Daily Dump – Compost at Home” began in 2006 April. So she spends her time figuring out the best way to get everyone to compost at home, make friends with maggots, and understand that having a clean city starts with how you throw away waste daily. The word “Sustainable” in her head is all about understanding the patterns of interconnectedness. Her previous work in the small-scale industry, crafts, and design education all inform her current project.

She enjoys the mundane and knows there are lots of things she does not understand, especially the idea of the imaginary number. She is the recipient of different awards, which is supposed to be a good thing people tell her, in truth, she is not so sure. She loves her family, likes sketching, enjoys being 56 and is inspired by many people who have helped her make sense of the world.

Angus Donald Campbell is the Head of Department and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Industrial Design, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). He is a qualified industrial designer with a Masters degree and over 15 years of university lecturing, research and freelance design experience. His design research focuses on innovation at the nexus of social, ecological and technological systems within the South African context. This is evidenced through multiple publications, conference papers and postgraduate student supervision.

Campbell’s Masters in Industrial Design (Technikon Witwatersrand, 2003) focused ondeveloping new stylistic possibilities for African product design inspired by African cultural heritage and foregrounded his current transdisciplinary Doctorate in Development Studies (UJ) focused on technology innovation by small-scale urban farmers in Johannesburg. He is a co-founder and coordinator of the Design Society Development (DSD) DESIS Lab heading up the lab's LOCAL Design in the Global Southresearch focus area. He was a co-founder of the Izindaba Zokudla (Conversations about Food) project focused on innovation in Soweto’s food system, and was a board member of the Museum of African Design (MOAD), before it closed in 2017. For more information please visit: www.angusdonaldcampbell.com