Brian is Course Director for the MFA design at the Belfast School of Art at Ulster University in Belfast. He is currently in the process of developing the institution’s postgraduate design teaching offering and is co-investigator on the AHRC-funded Design Innovation and Land Assets project (£130k+), which will feed into a broader arts and humanities based exploration of landscape decision-making in the UK. Additionally, he is also managing two smaller-scale projects examining the impact of covid-19 on the NI creative Industries (£10k). In late 2020, he was awarded Ulster University's ECR, Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Distinguished Research Fellowship.

Prior to joining the Belfast School of Art, he held academic positions in Central Saint Martins and the Glasgow School of Art. At GSA, he led studio teaching across a portfolio of three masters programmes in the areas of Service Design, Environmental Design and Citizenship. During the same period, he delivered a series of design research projects across the Highland and Islands region, focusing on SME-support, public sector innovation and digital health.

He has published widely, with his work appearing in major journals such as Design Studies, Design Issues, CoDesign and Design Management. His first book, Dewey and Design, written for Springer-Nature’s Design Research Foundations series, explores the relationship between John Dewey’s philosophy and design research.

He is a senior fellow of the HEA. He acts a peer reviewer for the AHRC, the Leverhulme Trust, Design Issues and CoDesign. He has acted as a visiting lecturer for Tokyo Metropolitan University and is currently an external examiner at TU Dublin.

He received his PhD from Central Saint Martins, investigating how digital maps could be designed to support urban tourists’ and walkers’ situation awareness. His research interests now span a number of domains, including: the theory underpinning contemporary design research methodologies; the role of graphic representations in mediating human-environment relations; and the ways design can contribute to enhancing the sustainability of fragile rural communities.