Professor Laurene Vaughan is Dean of the School of Design at RMIT University. In 2011–2012 she held the position of Neirenberg Chair –Invited Distinguished Professor of Design, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University. Laurene is internationally recognized for her leadership in design education and her particular passion for interdisciplinary, exploratory and applied approaches. Laurene supervises practice based research degrees at RMIT and has supervised over 40 students to successful completion of their degrees. Laurene has a diverse design research practice that is grounded in place based, human centred design interventions. She has been a Chief Investigator of range of research projects, with competitive funding in excess of $1.9million. The outcomes of her research result in industry reports, academic publications, exhibitions and project artefacts. Her co-edited publications include: Designing Place (Melbourne Books 2010), Mapping Environmental Issues in the City (Springer 2011, Design Collectives: an approach to practice (Cambridge Press 2012), Performing the Archive (Ashgate 2014), and Practice Based Design Research (Bloomsbury 2017). Her most recent collection is Designing Cultures of Care (Bloomsbury December 2018).