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Dr Anne Schiffer

Reader

Dr Schiffer explores how human-centred design collaborations can contribute to equitable and just futures in the context of energy, mobility and water scarcity in the Global South. She is the author of Reframing Energy Access: Insights from The Gambia.

The interdisciplinary nature of Dr Schiffer's research brings together participatory design practice, urbanism, feminist development theory and ethnography. She holds a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast that critiques the role of designers in international development. Prior to joining Leeds Beckett University, she led the Scottish part of Community Power, a European funded project that aimed to improve policy and legislation to speed up the development of community-owned renewable energy.

Dr Schiffer has a passion for design thinking as a tool for social change and supporting people who want to turn their ideas into action through human-centred design. She has facilitated design workshops for community groups and decision makers in Ireland, the UK, Sweden and Thailand. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and a member of the African Studies Association.

Current Teaching

Dr Schiffer supervises a number of PhD students, leads the MA3D Design Exploratory Practice Module and is a year and module leader on the BA Product Design course where she teaches across all levels and leads the following modules:

P6.12 Design for the Real world
P4.4 Design Process
P4.5 Human-centred design research
P4.6 Responsible Design

Research Interests

Dr Schiffer’s research explores how human-centred design processes can create equitable and just futures in the context of energy, mobility and water scarcity in the Global South. She co-leads the new Leeds School of Arts PARTICIPATE research cluster together with Dr Marc Fabri and Dr Mary Ikoniadou.

Recent and ongoing research collaborations include:

Consultancy to coordinate research for Friends of the Earth International Renewables & Land Project with a focus on gender and justice in the Global South (2021-23)
Lead-investigator on ‘Sustainable energy futures? An exploration of household energy and mobility practice in the Leeds Climate Innovation District’ (2023)
Co-investigator on the original Leeds School of Arts ‘Wise Women’ (2022) project which sought to empower academic women to overcome career barriers, as well as the Wise Women 2.0 (2023) follow on project which is focused women’s experiences of operational processes related to key academic progression criteria. Both projects received funding from Research England and the Leeds Beckett Equity and Inclusion Research fund
Innovate UK funded research on water scarcity in the West Bengal region of India that integrates qualitative human-centred and technical insights in order to adapt ‘Monitoring and ANalytics To Improve Service’ (MANTIS) technology into the rural Indian context (2020-21)
Research on ‘gender equity and energy access in the Global South’ (2020-21), funded by an Anglia Ruskin University Global Challenges Research Challenges Fund (GCRF) award. This is international collaboration brought together a range of academic and non-academic partners based in Ghana, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, the Netherlands and the UK to investigates how ‘access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy’ is constructed by professional actors and with what implications for gender equity