ABOUTSpeaker Profile: Gilbert Cockton
Gilbert Cockton is a Professor in Northumbria University’s internationally renowned School of Design, a short walk from the Sage over the Millennium Bridge and up the banks of the Tyne. His research interests focus on garnering and exploiting human insights for design and evaluation. Gilbert has a strong interdisciplinary background, with a Cambridge MA and PGCE in History and Education (first class honours) and a PhD in Computer Science from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
He has maintained his interest in the humanities and human sciences throughout his careers in technology and design. He believes that simple answers to hard problems can only be found by asking hard questions that cut through superficial complexities to the fundamental constructs underlying them. Such fundamental constructs can then be mixed and matched in infinite ways, creating new opportunities for design and evaluation approaches that support the complexity of connections needed for successful innovation in a world that is becoming ever more demanding and discerning.
Gilbert delights in softening up boundaries between academic disciplines, research and practice, public and private sectors, arts and sciences, creativity and rigour, and theory and practice. His career has mixed blue skies and applied research, education from primary schools to PhDs, business support, professional practice, invention, consultancy and training, and a few years of part-time childcare.
He has held leadership roles at regional, national and international levels, including vice-chair of the regional board that created CODEWORKS, chair of the British Interaction group (2001-4), vice-chair of IFIP’s international technical committee on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and 2003 co-chair of the world’s largest annual HCI conference (ACM CHI). He is currently scientific co-ordinator for a 25 country European network on design and evaluation methods. Since 1985, he has published almost 190 scientific and professional papers, books, features, reports and articles, delivered 185 invited presentations (including keynotes in 7 countries), supervised or examined over 50 research students, and managed research and enterprise projects with a total value exceeding £6.6m. In his spare time he lives near the beach, 30 minutes from the Sage, with his wife, daughter and son.
