Lunch & Learn with IHCD | Roger + Me, A Conversation about the Pandemic as...
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About the Speakers
Roger Coleman is a design activist, photographer and Professor Emeritus of the Royal College of Art, London. He is also an adviser to the Helen Hamlyn Centre, which he co-founded with Jeremy Myerson in 1999.
Prior to joining the RCA in 1991 and up until 2002 he was a director of R&D companies London Innovation and Lynch Intellectual Property Ltd, which specialised in socially useful products a services. There he established a longstanding interest in the implications for design of disability and population ageing, and began working on the theory and practice of inclusive design. In 1994 he gave the first ever paper on the subject, The Case for Inclusive Design, at the International Ergonomics Association conference in Toronto and served as Professor of Inclusive Design at the Royal College of Art from 2002 until July 2008.
He is currently resident in Bué, a small winemaking village in the Sancerre appellation, and President of 'Christian Louis: clair-obscur' a not-for-profit association set up by himself and his wife to promote the work of French photographer Christian Louis, whose career was cut short by cancer at the age of 53.
Valerie Fletcher has been Executive Director since 1998 of the Institute for Human Centered Design (IHCD). Fletcher writes, lectures and works internationally. She currently oversees projects ranging from the development of design guides for accessibility compliance and inclusive design to a wide range of consultation and design services to public, and private entities in the US and globally. She created the IHCD User/Expert Lab which has over 500 people with lived experience of a physical, sensory or brain-based functional issue engaged in the evaluation of places, products and services. Her research focus is integrated social and environmentally sustainable solutions for multifamily housing, healthcare, culture, workplaces, and the public realm.
She has been a Special Advisor on Inclusive Design to the Open Society Institute and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. She is on the North American representative on the Board of the International Association for Universal Design (IAUD) in Japan. Fletcher has a master’s degree in ethics and public policy from Harvard University. The Boston Society of Architects awarded her the Women in Design award in 2005. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Boston Architectural College.