Dr Lara Salinas

Biography

Dr Lara Salinas is a design researcher and educator, and co-director of Service Futures Lab at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. She leads research on design for public sector innovation and climate action in a range of different projects across sectors. With over a decade in academia, she has played a pioneering role in shaping knowledge exchange in the creative disciplines.

Lara leads at international, national, and local levels yielding a broad spectrum of outputs and outcomes such as capacity-build initiatives, innovative service development, policy impact, methodological innovations, place-making and the establishment of communities of practice. Her work has led to the creation of new programmes (UKRI/AHRC secured £25 million in novel funding mechanisms for public design and climate justice, e.g., Future Observatory and Design Exchange Partnerships) new policies (influence of sustainable policy with national recognition at Southwark Council) new innovation units (Greenhouse at Cabinet Office's Government Digital Service) and new protocols (embedding social and planet related key performance indicators in national innovation agencies). Her work is recognised nationally and internationally by relevant sector bodies such as the OECD Observatory for Public Sector Innovation, Joint Research Centre European Commission, UKRI/AHRC, Department for Transport, Connected Places Catapult, Design Council, Nesta, UK Policy Lab, DEFRA Design Policy Lab, UK Policy Design Profession.

Her work has been featured nationally and internationally as exemplar of design for place-based climate action and public sector innovation by UAL KE Strategy, UAL Climate Action Plan, KEF Narratives, REF2021, BBC, Nesta, Future Observatory, European Commission, OECD Observatory for Public Sector Innovation. She has demonstrated outstanding ability to influence policy trough evidence-based research, such as leading a national review of design research for public services, resulting in recommendations that secured £25m for the Future Observatory, and novel funding mechanisms to enhance collaborative innovation for climate justice; or embedding social and planet related key performance indicators in national innovation agencies. She has a track record of high-quality publications; success in generating income, leveraging resources and scaling up collaboration, making significant contributions to KEF, HEB-CI and REF assessments.

Lara is also director of SoRA-DASH, a support service to increase the Societal Readiness Levels of green mobility innovations; and founder of PNK Garden, a place-making initiative that has transformed an abandoned land into an independent community garden in central London, leveraging £180,000 of mixed resources. In the past she has been AHRC Research Fellow in Public Service, Postdoctoral Research Fellow on Public Collaboration Lab, Postdoctoral Research Fellow on Pharma Factory. She completed her PhD at Imagination Lancaster, Lancaster University in 2016, in one of the four hubs for knowledge exchange in the creative disciplines (AHRC 2012-2016), exploring the impact of public services on placemaking. She trained in fine arts and new media art.

She supervises doctoral research in the fields of design for service and policy, design for social innovation and design for climate transitions and as part of the European doctoral network CoDesign4Transitions.