Rate My Professor Melinda Gaughwin

Dr. Melinda Gaughwin is a Lecturer in the School of Art and Design, College of Creative Arts, Design and Humanities at Adelaide University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Film), a Bachelor of Design (Honours) (Communication Design), and a PhD in Design Studies. Gaughwin has been involved in university design education for over a decade. Her career includes roles as an Associate Lecturer and Academic Fellow in the Design Lab at the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design, and Planning, where she coordinated and taught Design for Social Impact, Principles of Design, Design Process and Methods, Design Thinking, and Experience and Service Design. Prior to Sydney, she taught undergraduate Communication Design practice, theory, and history and worked as a research assistant and project coordinator at the University of South Australia.

Her research investigates Apple’s shaping of contemporary consumer culture by design through the lens of Foucauldian thoughts on power, the political shaping of material and immaterial everyday lives by design, and critiques of design that uncover this shaping. Key publications include “The Apple Way”: Foucault, Design, Consumerism, and the Shaping of Apple Subjects (Design and Culture, 2023); From Human-Centred to Life-Centred Design: Considering Environmental and Ethical Concerns in the Design of Interactive Products (Journal of Responsible Technology, 2022, with Madeleine Borthwick and Martin Tomitsch); Social Design Pedagogy and the UN SDGs (Discerne, 2021, with Sarah Ellice Flint); Transformative Repair Beyond Materiality: Care, Bereavement and Loss (PLATE2025 conference paper, 2025, with Guy Keulemans, Trent Jansen, and Brian Parkes); and the exhibition Concepts for a Modbury Age Friendly Precinct (2018, with Ian Gwilt, Anna Leditschke, and Amber Davis). She teaches courses such as Honours Research 1 (Creative), Research Methods (Creative), Communication Design Studio 3, Critical Design Practice, Design, Culture and Society 1 and 2, and Research Studio 1, and is eligible to co-supervise Masters and PhD students.