Kirsteen Aubrey

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Kirsteen Aubrey

Senior Lecturer in Academic Development

My profile

Biography

Kirsteen is an Academic Developer with a Design background. She co-leads the Institution’s Professional Standards Framework (PSF) from Advance HE. She is module lead for HE Today, and regularly teaches, contributes to other modules, engages in peer observations and assesses work. 

Previously, she was the first Education Lead for the Department of Design (2017-2021), writing the annual education strategy for the Department, operationalising the actions of the strategy, using co-design approaches to onboard staff, and facilitating the development of innovative approaches to pedagogy in Design.

Her educational leadership utilises her expertise to drive creative solutions using collaboration, problem solving and mediation. 

Unusual for an academic developer, Kirsteen’s creative background includes a specialism of glass, where she has spent 20+ years teaching the craft of glassblowing. Her research also highlights her creative engagement where her collaborative approach challenges the creative agency of glass. Her numerous creative outputs, including artefacts, film, books and exhibitions can be found here : Kirsteen Aubrey – Manchester School of Art (mmu.ac.uk).

Working in the material of glass, her research outputs are often object-based, and she employs her knowledge of objects to inform her wider object-based learning  approach within her teaching across Design and UTA. 

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Research outputs

Kirsteen’s creative background includes a specialism of glass, where she has spent 20+ years teaching the craft of glassblowing. Her research also highlights her creative engagement where her collaborative approach challenges the creative agency of glass. Her numerous creative outputs, including artefacts, film, books and exhibitions can be found here : Kirsteen Aubrey – Manchester School of Art (mmu.ac.uk).Kirsteen Aubrey – Manchester School of Art (mmu.ac.uk).

RESEARCH                                                

Research: Conferences, Papers

The following are examples of advancing and disseminating knowledge, by theme:

Creative Pedagogy

  • Doctorate- Object handling (completion April 2025)
  • ‘Object handling:Interrogating, revealing and uniting a community of practice’ EUROSoTL 2022. “Building Communities through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” (2022).
  • Invited Speaker: ‘Emergence’. London Design Festival (2019).
  • ‘Questioning assumptions’: CELT (2015). https://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/ltia/Vol13Iss1/2_Aubrey_Undisciplinarity.pdf
  •  ‘The value of material interrogation’: Group for Learning in Art and Design, Sheffield (2015).
  • ‘New Technologies in Glass’ (Feat). Cutler, V.  A&C Black. ISBN: 978-1408139547 (2012).

Collaborative practice

  • ‘Coastal Visions’. The British Haiku Society. ISBN: 978-1-906333-18-8 (2022).
  • Innovation through Collaboration: Make:Shift Conference, Crafts Council (2016).
  • ‘Creative collaborations’ (Aubrey/McFadyen). Athens Institute for Education and Research (2011).

Employability

Design and Healthcare

  • ‘Exploring Art and Design for Healthcare’: Design for Health Conference, Sheffield (2015).
  • ‘Social Innovations with Craft and Design Education’ (Aubrey/Felcey). Consortium on Applied Research and Professional Education (CARPE), Manchester (2013).
  • ‘Craft, Design & the urban environment’(Aubrey/Felcey):Making Futures, Plymouth (2013).

Research: Exhibitions

These national and international outputs highlight my collaborative approach and explore the innovative agency of my design specialism of glass. Working with scientists, Haiku poets, graphic designers, film makers, Astrophysicists, my research produces written work, photographs, textiles, installation, and film.

  • Collaborations: Glass. Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Output: Artefact (2022).
  • Glass, Meet the Future 21. Northlands / Toyama Institute of Glass Art/. (Film) (2021).
  • Glass, Meet the Future 20. Northlands Creative. (Film) (2020).
  • Radical Responses. Dezeen Virtual Design festival, Milan. (Photography) (2020).
  • NGC 21. National Glass Centre, Sunderland. (Artefact) (2019).
  • Radical Responses. Showcased at IASDR, MMU. (Photo, Zine, Artefact) https://iasdr2019.org/uploads/files/RR-catalogue.pdf (2019).
  • Drawing Inspirations: Collaboration with Alice Kettle. Craft in the Bay, Cardiff. (Artefact) (2016)
  • Enchantment and Reverie: Collaboration with Alice Kettle, Amanda Ravetz.  Visual Arts Scotland, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. (Installation, film projection) (2015).
  • Seamless: The Digital in Design. Slovakia. http://www.seamlessdigitaldesign.org/ (2013).
  • Pairings. Contemporary Applied Arts, UK. (Artefact) (2013).
  • International Glass Biennale. Stourbridge, UK (Artefact) (2012).

  • Exhibitions

    Aubrey, K. (2019) Undisciplinarity. [Exhibition] Teaching and Learning in Action, 1/2019 -

    Aubrey, K. (2015) Visual Arts Scotland, 2015. [Exhibition] Royal Scottish Gallery,Edinburgh, 7/2/2015 -

  • Artefacts

    Ian, S., Prof Richard, V.N., Aubrey, K. (2020) Sensing the coast: exploring permanence, physicality and perspective. Atelier d’arts Film Fest (European Film Festival for Fine Crafts) and Real to Reel, the UK Film Festival of Crafts,.