Dr Idrees Rasouli

Courses taught:

• Art, Health and Wellbeing (Postgraduate)
• Interior Design Innovation (Postgraduate)
• Human-Centred Design (Postgraduate)

Dr Idrees Rasouli is Associate Professor of Design and Urban Innovation, committed to building effective ecosystems that support and advance mission-driven education, research, knowledge exchange, and strategic partnerships. He serves as the institutional REF2029 Lead Reviewer for UoA 32 (Art & Design), and as Faculty Lead for Academic and Industry Partnerships within the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences, working across the faculty’s four schools to enhance research activity, student access, continuation and completion rates, attainment, progression, and the overall student experience. He is Course Director for interdisciplinary postgraduate programmes within the Cambridge School of Art, and his research investigates the critical role of design in cities, organisations, and communities experiencing resource constraints and emergencies, as well as the influence of urban ecosystems, energy infrastructures, and spatial dynamics on innovation.

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Background

Idrees is an award-winning designer, academic, and researcher of products, processes, and places working at the intersection of design, urban dynamics, spatial ecosystem, and innovation. With over 15-years of leadership experience, his international profile encompasses collaborations across Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East, alongside research and commercial-educational partnerships with over eighty organisations. As a design leader and strategic change-maker, he brings a truly global perspective and a deep cultural, contextual, and geographic awareness to both academia and industry. He is an enabler of creative practice and pedagogy, knowledge exchange partnerships and collaborative research that break boundaries between higher education, business, and society, with deep knowledge and experience in growing initial pilots into mature scaled systems.

Driven by a passion for arts and design that heals, prepares, and transforms, his inter/crossdisciplinary work focuses on Design and Innovation for Urban Justice and a Post-Oil World — a critical field addressing the pressing environmental, social, and economic challenges facing cities, organisations, and communities. Idrees is a strategic and transformational leader recognised for driving excellence and innovation in arts and design education, research, and practice. He collaborates extensively with academics across the social sciences, engineering, technology, healthcare, business and economics, as well as with leading private and public sector organisations, charities, and non-governmental organisations to co-create and develop inclusive and sustainable transformations.

He is the Founder & Creative Director of X-Crop, a Cambridge-based research and innovation lab focused on making cities, organisations, and people better by design. He is also a Co-Founder & Co-Lead of Create Cambridge, a new cultural compact for Cambridge, UK that is focused on transforming the role of culture, cultural leadership and partnership in the city, ensuring that Cambridge can become a globally recognised champion of creativity and innovation, where the arts, culture and its producers can flourish, and actively help design the future of the city and drive inclusive growth.

Trained at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, Idrees has been working with all kinds of cities, organisations, and people, helping them solve issues of urbanisation in the 21st century through design, on both local and global levels. With a multidisciplinary educational background comprising the fields of architecture, advanced engineering, and industrial design, Idrees cultivated his leadership skills through extensive practice, pedagogy, and collaboration with a number of world-famous architecture, innovation, design, engineering, and branding companies, such as the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, InnovationRCA, Ramboll, Fortune 500, and Fitch, with direct involvement in projects across a wide range of industries, including technology, automotive, energy, healthcare, transport, fashion, aviation, consumer goods, manufacturing, education, and construction throughout the UK, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Until recently, Idrees served as Deputy Head of Cambridge School of Art (CSA) for Education, External Engagement and Enterprise in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences at Anglia Ruskin University (2021-2024), developing and delivering policies and strategies relating to learning and teaching quality and effectiveness, research and innovation, civic and global engagement, enterprise and knowledge exchange, as well as the development of School and Faculty infrastructure. During this time, he also served as the Chair of Art & Design, responsible for the strategic direction of a large portfolio of programmes, with a particular focus on vertical and horizontal experiences and progression and new forms of multi-site and shared collaboration integrating practice-based research with teaching and knowledge exchange. He led on the planning and development of formal and informal offerings, with a focus on extending the school’s art and design curriculum and portfolio; looking at how we can move beyond disciplinary boundaries towards interconnected, holistic, analytical, decolonial, and entrepreneurial approaches that enable positive contribution to society, health, and planet.

Prior to this, he was Head of Department of Architecture (2018-2019), Principal Lecturer and Course Leader (2013-2019) of Interior Design, Architecture, and Urban Landscape, and Senior Lecturer (2009-2013) in the School of Design at Ravensbourne University London, where he developed and delivered the department’s academic curriculum and led various design courses, including the world’s first ARB accredited interior design course. There he focused on diversity, sustainability, and inclusivity to build high quality academic experiences and stimulating environment for students and staff from diverse backgrounds and combined pedagogic experimentation and inter/crossdisciplinary local, national, and international collaborations to co-create the best propositions for the issues of the built environment and society. During 2015-2020, Idrees taught design and innovation to postgraduate and research students in the School of Design at the Royal College of Art alongside prominent academics and industry leaders, with a focus on cross-cultural design, transnational trends, and context-specific methods and approaches, as well as fostering external relationships that empower staff and enhance student employability and entrepreneurial skills.

Idrees is a Senior Fellow [SFHEA] of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts, and Academician of The Academy of Urbanism, all of which enable him to actively contribute to the social, cultural, economic, political, and physical development of cities, organisations, and people. As a senior leader, he has built strategic alliances with academic institutions, public and private sector industries, local governments and the third sector as well as strong cross-functional team cultures and transparent and effective relationships with diverse stakeholders. He is experienced in the design and delivery of academic and creative development activities and is actively involved in academic quality assurance and enhancement as external examiner and course development advisor, and takes on additional leadership roles as board advisor, creative director, and mentor to bring together diverse teams and functions to make cities, organisations, and people better.

As Chief External Examiner and Course Development Consultant (2019-2024) for the School of Design, Architecture, and Interiors at Falmouth University, Idrees offered expert guidance on developing innovative multi-site, digital, and cross-cultural undergraduate and postgraduate design courses. Between (2021-2023), he was on the Board of Advisors for Digital Influx (a world’s first EdTech company that teaches young people User Experience and Design Thinking), helping the company to better understand design, technology, education, economics, demographics, geopolitics, and policy. He also served on the Board of Governors for Ravensbourne University London (2016-2019), successfully achieving university status (Taught Degree Awarding Powers-TDAP) and developing research and innovation partnerships with local government, NGOs, and creative industries. Prior to these, he was a member of Design Museum’s Design Innovation Committee for Design Ventura Programme (2013-2017), an annual design challenge for high school students, supported by Deutsche Bank as part of its global youth engagement programme Born to Be), helping the museum build partnership and collaboration capacity, advocate for creativity and entrepreneurship, and champion the role of design in transforming society and economy.

Spoken Languages

• English
• Hindi
• Pashto
• Persian/Dari
• Urdu

Research interests

Idrees’ practice-based doctoral research in Innovation Design Engineering at the School of Design, Royal College of Art, which he passed at viva without correction in 2023, examined Decolonised Innovation as the seventh generation of innovation. His research, “Decolonised Innovation; Designing Needs, Dreams, and Aspirations Under Resource Constraints” was set within transformative design that crossed geographic, cultural, and political borders, and it investigated the effects of social context, environment, and cultural differences on innovation. He researched new methods of innovation by examining how transnationalism, specifically borders (community, city, country, continent), serve as a point of convergence for identity, imagination, and design practice in the least developed, developing, and developed economies.

Idrees’ overarching research — pursued through his private practice, as well as consultancy, teaching, and scholarly writing — engages collaboratively with a range of local and global public and provide sector organisations. Situated at the intersection of products, processes, and places, he specialises in Design and Innovation for Urban Justice and a Post-Oil World, with a particular focus on arts and design practices that promote healing, preparedness, and transformative change. At its core, his research explores: a) how does design function within/across cities and communities facing resource constraints and emergencies, and what drives its shift towards ecological sustainability? b) how do urban dynamics (cultural norms, societal structures, new realities) and spatial ecosystems (physical context, limited resources, absence of oil) shape innovation, and what factors determine its success in fostering ecological resilience?

These inquiries are framed within the concept of ‘Design Pivots’ (Rasouli, 2023) — a framework for imagining and seeking alternative modernities by developing culturally, contextually, and geographically grounded design and innovation methods. These methods integrate socio-ecological systems to expand the conceptual scope of design and diversify innovation practice, perspectives, and knowledge domains. Idrees’ work in this area spans multiple strands, including Human-Connected Design, Design in/for Emergency, Autonomous Design, Decolonised Design, and Design Under Resource Constraints.

1. Human-connected Design: how social and cultural practices as well as local relations enable more effective, meaningful, systemic, and sustainable design outcomes and practices? how can design increase adoption and usage, and address real-world needs and provide positive user experience? what constitutes ‘human-connected design’, and why?
2. Design in/for Emergency: how intensity and fluidity improve response efficiency and contribute to mitigating the impact and aiding in systemic recovery? how can design unlock resilience and support the well-being of affected individuals and communities? what constitutes ‘design in/for emergency’, and why?
3. Autonomous Design: how nonlinearity and systemic intervention help to develop outcomes and practices that address complex/wicked problems, increase productivity, raise standards, and reduce costs? how can design build capability for independence and provide the possibilities to rethink power structures? what constitutes ‘autonomous design’, and why?
4. Decolonised Design: how can design reveal the significance of diverse design outcomes and practices? what are the complexities of varied knowledge and approaches that exist across geographies and cultural contexts? what constitutes ‘decolonised design’, and why?
5. Design Under Resource Constraints: how resource constraints create the conditions for creative diversity and enable the development of local knowledge and expertise? how can design bring together several elements into relationship with one another to formulate alternative methods and context-specific interventions? what constitutes ‘resource constrained design’, and why?

Conference & Journal Editorial/Grant Application Reviewing

• External Assessor (Insights Grant), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
• Reviewer (Sociology and Politics), Palgrave Macmillan Publishers
• Reviewer (Ethics in/of/for Design), Design Research Society
• Reviewer (Sustainable Design), Journal of Design, Business & Society

Areas of research supervision

• Innovation Methods
• Cross-cultural & Transnational Design
• Creativity & Design-thinking
• Design Leadership & Systems-thinking
• Nonlinear & Experimental Design
• Social Design & Urban Relations
• Sustainable Design & Inclusion
• Sustainable Technology & Production
• Design for Health & Wellbeing
• Design for Resilience & Safety
• Design Science & Pedagogy
• Future Spaces & Environments
• Social Regeneration & Urban Rehabilitation
• Participatory & Community Design

Teaching

Idrees’ particular strength is in partnering academia with public, private, and third sector organisations (particularly science and technology), to conduct research and co-create world-class ideas, prototypes, and new forms of multi-site and shared collaboration that define the future of cities and urban environments, learning and experience, mobility and energy, transaction and trade, health and wellbeing, living and care, work and play.

Practice-led and research-informed, his pedagogy focuses on pioneering new methods and models for partnering professional bodies and employers, as well as public and private sector organisations with academia to shape programmes, connect students and staff to future agendas, and to inform and influence the industry, impact the economy and contribute to the well-being of people and society. His teaching encourages an international and cross geo-cultural educational experience through employability-led learning and purposeful engagement with employers, business and industry, encompassing multi-site and shared collaborative projects that challenges stereotypical approaches and methodologies to transform students into entrepreneurs, foster interdisciplinarity, build a sustainable future, and address funding opportunities.

Idrees contributes to our MA Art, Health, and Wellbeing, MA Interior Design Innovation, and MA Human-Centred Design. He currently leads teaching on the following modules:

• Critical and Contextual Studies
• Care Ethics: Place, Environment, and Community
• Care Practices: Creative Future Health
• Art for Health and Wellbeing
• Grand Challenge
• Design Ethics: Human, Planet, and Future Conditions
• Design Practices: Design for Humanity and Systemic Change
• Human-Centred Design
• Design Practices: Urban Futures and Smart Inhabitations
• Interior Design Innovation

Qualifications

• PhD Innovation Design Engineering, Royal College of Art
• MPhil Innovation Design Engineering, Royal College of Art
• PGCert in Teaching & Learning for Creative Courses, Ravensbourne University London
• MA Innovation Design Engineering, Royal College of Art
• MSc Innovation Design Engineering, Imperial College London
• BA (Hons) Interior Design Environment Architectures, Ravensbourne University London

Memberships, editorial boards

• Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy
• Academician of The Academy of Urbanism
• Fellow, Royal Society of Arts

Research grants, consultancy, knowledge exchange

As a systems thinker, Idrees has built strong purposeful networks and ecosystems to address global, political, and social challenges, generate revenue, seek external funding, and develop pilots into mature scaled programmes. Since 2013, he has secured funds of more than £5 million as PI and Co-I from public and private funding bodies. These projects, distinguished by their inter/crossdisciplinary nature, reflect his commitment to using design as a tool for addressing real-world challenges.

• Co-Investigator, Create Cambridge: A New Cultural Compact for Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, November 2023 - ongoing, £100,000. Funder: Arts Council England, Anglia Ruskin University, and University of Cambridge
• Principal Investigator, Design for Social Regeneration After Mass Disaster, Kamaishi, Japan, 19 June - 20 May, £15,000. Funder: Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and Ravensbourne University London
• Principal Consultant, Psychologically Informed Spaces for Complex Mental Health Needs, 19 August - 20 Jan, £100,000. Funder: Community Housing & Therapy Group and Croydon Council
• Principal Consultant, Design for Urban Safety and Wellbeing, 19 August - 20 Jan, £70,000. Funder: Atlantic Pacific Rescue and Greater London Authority
• Principal Investigator, Celebrating Life: Designing the 21st Century Crematorium, 18 March - 18 May, £900,000. Funder, Croydon Council
• Principal Investigator, Peace Garden: Designing-out Knife Crime, 18 April - 18 August, £40,000. Funder: Southwark Council and London Mayor
• Principal Investigator, Ford Autonomous: Future of Interior Design in Autonomous Cars, 17 February - 17 May, £10,000. Funder: Ford Motors
• Principal Investigator, Re-thinking Orphanage Centers: A Place for Children of War & Conflict, 17 November - 18 February, £4million. Funder: World of Hope and Osun State, Nigeria
• Principal Investigator, Healthy Futures, Healthy Minds: Re-thinking Child’s Playground, 17 May - 17 July, £150,000. Funder: Greenwich Council
• Principal Investigator, GATEway 2030: The Future with Driver-less Cars, 16 October - 16 December, part of the £8million UK Government Grant GATEway Project. Funder: Ravensbourne University London and Transport Research Laboratory
• Principal Investigator, Qaf 1.0: Sustainable Washing System, 13 August - 14 October, £40,000. Funder: InnovationRCA, Wates Foundation, Unilever, and James Dyson Foundation

Selected recent publications

PhD thesis:

Rasouli, M. I. (2023). Decolonised Innovation: Designing Needs, Dreams, and Aspirations Under Resource Constraints. Innovation Design Engineering, School of Design, Royal College of Art. London, United Kingdom

Book chapter:

Rasouli, M. I. (2025). 'Innovation in a Post-Oil City: Moving Design Away from Carbon Dependency'. (Chapter in AFTER OIL: A Comparative Analysis of Oil Heritage, Urban Transformations, and Resilience Paradigms), Springer.

Journal articles:

Rasouli, M. I. (2025). 'Designing Under Extreme Resource Constraints: How Practicing Distributed Design in Afghanistan Can Shape the Future of Distributed Design'. (Article in Distributed Design: Driving Design Vol. III), Distributed Design, Barcelona.

Rasouli, M. I. (2025). 'Future Mill Road: Designing a More-than-human Neighbourhood'. (Research Paper in What’s Around Design? Strategic, Speculative or Biodesign Futures for Nature Positive Impact), Springer Nature.

Rasouli, M. I., 2020. 'Disaster Recovery by Design'. Crisis Response Journal. Vol: 15, Issue: 4, P38-39

Rasouli, M. I., 2017. 'The Six Realities: Conservation of Architecture in the 21st Century'. in: Proceedings of the UAE Modern Conference on Modern Architecture Heritage Research and Practice, 14-15 November, Dubai Design Week, Dubai.

Policy papers/report

Rasouli, M. I. and Burman, M. (2024). 'Create Cambridge: A New Cultural Compact for Cambridge'. (Policy Paper) in Universities, Local Authorities and Culture-based Partnerships: Case studies, reflections and evidence from REF impact case studies). Publication by The National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange. London, UK.

Rasouli, M. I. (2020). Design for Social Regeneration After Mass Disaster: Researching Solutions for Immediate and Longer-term Needs. (Report Publication) for Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Kamaishi City and Mayor’s Office, and Nebama Bay.

Recent presentations and conferences

Rethinking Civic Engagement (speaker), The Case of Create Cambridge and Cambridge Room, CIVICLAB 2025 Conference, University of Derby, Derby, UK, 2025

Tradition vs. Innovation in Workspace Design (speaker), 10th Annual Smart Workspace Design Summit, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2024

Designing a More-than-human Neighbourhood (presenter), What’s Around Design Conference, Portimão, Portugal, 2024

Technology for Social Good (speaker), The National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange Policy Workshop, London, UK, 2024

Genius of the Place (panel), Cambridge Enterprise: Creative Cambridge Conference, Cambridge, UK, 2024

Pride in Place (chair of session), Cambridge Arts Network (C.A.N Conference 2024: Creative Placemaking) Cambridge, UK, 2024

AI and Creativity (panellist), The Hopes and Fears Lab (Kavli Centre for Ethics, Science and the Public) Cambridge, UK, 2023

Designing for the Future (panel), The Academy of Urbanism (Congress 2023) Cambridge, UK, 2023

The Thinking City (keynote), Cambridge Arts Network (C.A.N Conference 2023: More Than Nice To Have) Cambridge, UK, 2023

Betterment by Design (keynote), Architecture Society (University of Hertfordshire School of Architecture), Hertfordshire, UK, 2022

Is the Future Inclusive? (speaker), Cambridge Arts Network Conference (A Place of Creativity: creative & cultural response to a changed landscape), Cambridge, UK, 2022

Designing a Learning-centred Design School (keynote), Iranian Architecture Centre (Cross-cultural Design Education and Professional Practice), online, 2022

Approaching Creative Leadership Now (speaker), The Culture Capital Exchange (Future Creative Leadership), London, UK, 2021

Urbanisation, Cities, and Future Planning Through Design (speaker), World Humanitarian Forum (The Global Rest Dialogue: Re-Defining Humanitarianism), London, UK, 2021

Design, Freedom of Speech, and Human Rights (panellist), Criminology Society, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK, 2021

Leadership Challenges and Post-COVID 19 Futures (panellist), Leadership Think Factory, The Culture Capital Exchange, London, UK, 2021

The 13 Types of Innovation Under Resource Constraints (presenter), Research Conference, Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2020

Application of United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals by Design in the Process of Recovery from Disaster (keynote), Institute for Innovative Global Education, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan, 2020

Reducing Inequalities and Increasing Social Mobility in Design and the Built Environment Education and Practice (panellist), Vestre, London, UK, 2020

Innovation in Controlled Environment Agriculture and Future of Urban Consumption (advisor), Crop Health & Protection, London, UK, 2020

Design Under Resource Constraints (presenter), Research Conference, Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2019

Current and Future Agendas for London (panellist), London Architecture School Leader’s Think Tank, New London Architecture, London, UK, 2019

Building Better, Building Beautiful: Station-led Regeneration, Mobility, and Housing in the Modern City (workshop lead), Future Cities Forum, London, UK, 2019

21st Century Design Tools and Methods (keynote), Research, Learning and Teaching Conference, Ravensbourne University London, London, UK, 2018

Conservation of Architecture in the 21st Century: The Six Realities (keynote), UAE Modern, Dubai Design Week, Dubai, UAE, 2017

Feeding Future Cities (keynote), Smarter Cities Now Conference, London, UK, 2017

Innovations for Emerging Markets (panellist), InnoFrugal Conference, Helsinki, Finland, 2017

Education x Industry (keynote), Research, Learning and Teaching Conference, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK, 2017

The Architecture of Money (keynote), The Culture Capital Exchange, London, UK, 2016

Designing for the Sea (Keynote), University of Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy, 2014

Media experience

Idrees is regularly invited to speak at national and international conferences and events as a keynote and panellist on the subject of making cities, organisations, and people better by design—healthy, prepared, and transformed. He regularly collaborates with public and private sector businesses, civil society institutions, grassroots and professional associations, communities, and individuals to initiate design research projects, attract seed and grant funding, and drive design-led systems-change and develop ecologies of interventions.