Professor Hua Dong
Head of Brunel Design School/Professor

Summary

Hua Dong is Professor and Head of Brunel Design School. Her research expertise is inclusive design. She is the convenor of the Inclusive Design Research Special Interest Group (InclusiveSIG) at the Design Research Society (DRS) and an advisor of the DRS (2022-2028), and has been an organiser of the Cambridge Workshop for Universal Access and Assistive Technology since 2014.     

Dong has contributed to the creation and development of several successful research groups in the UK and China. She established the Inclusive Design Research Group at Brunel University London. Her research contributed to the  Design Council’s ‘Design Bugs Out’ Challenge, with successful products on market and exhibition at the Design Museum. Dong also founded the Inclusive Design Research Centre in China, edited the ‘Inclusive design column’ for the ‘Design’ magazine (2020), and helped create the inclusive design guidance for Ant Financial. Their inclusive co-creation projects with community centres at Yangpu District were selected for exhibition at the Milan Triannual (2019), and active ageing toolkit was selected to feature at the design museum of Zurich (2024). 

Dong was invited to give keynote/invited speeches on inclusive design at the Universal Design Conference Oslo (2012), UD Conference Fukuoka (2012), Nordic Design Week (2015, 2016), Hohai University (2015), Fudan University (2015), Chongqing University (2015), Beihang University (2017), NorthEast University (2018), IEID of the International Forum on Innovation and Emerging Industries Development (2019), Harvard Medical School (2022), and the Ageing Civilisation Conference (2023). She has been invited to provide specialist consultancy to Which? (A UK consumer magazine) Reckitt Benkiser, Active Life Village, Shanghai M&G Stationery Inc., Zhida Technology, Cam Scanner, Ant Financial and the Government (e.g. Nanjing) and Charities (e.g. AgeUK).

Dong is on the Peer Review College of AHRC since 2019. She was Principal Investigator of the EPSRC grant ‘Facilitating Wider Uptake of Inclusive Design’ and successfully co-applied Newton Funds (sponsored by AHRC, British Council) as the partner country’s PI and has won prestigious fellowship awards. She was Co-I of EPSRC and KTP projects and won a number of industry-funded projects both in the UK and China. In 2020, she initiated, together with Dr Cifter, the UK-Turkey collaboration on inclusive design, leading to the publication of the book “Inclusive Design+ Social Innovation” (2021). She also designed the film ‘evolving inclusive design’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzl1dKCMGLw). She received the AHRC SEED Fellowship in 2023.  

Dong was awarded PhD Degree from University of Cambridge. She gained a BEng in Industrial Design and MArch in Architectural Design and Theory from Tongji University. 

Dong was appointed International Judge of the SDGs Design International Awards (2019). She was Council Member of the Design Research Society (DRS) from 2012-2020, and was elected Fellow of DRS in 2019.    

Qualifications

PhD, University of Cambridge 

MA and BEng, Tongji University 

PGCert, Brunel University 

Responsibility

Hua is a full professor in Design and Head of Brunel Design School.