Professor Lorraine Gamman

Biography

Dr. Lorraine Gamman is Professor of Design at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London and Director of the Design Against Crime (DAC) Research Lab, which she founded in 1999. DAC explores how art, design and creative engagement processes can reduce crime in partnership with many stakeholders, including the UK’s Design Council and Home Office; later with MOJ and some UK Prisons. Gamman is regarded as an authority in applied social design practice, is the co-creator of a range of award-winning anti-crime product interventions (including some co designed with prisoners) and has produced design benchmarks that have influenced international design, see: https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins/research-at-csm/design-against-crime.

Gamman has delivered many research projects funded by the AHRC, EPSRC, EU, ECR among other funders and works with artists, designers, policy-makers, crime prevention practitioners, retail, communities, prisons and prisoners, whilst continuing to deliver design education. She also serves on a number of charities including the Empathy Museum and RJ4All, advises the UK’s National Criminal Justice Arts Allowance (NCJAA)’s Research Committee, and is the author of books, journal articles, chapters and reports on how creative and restorative processes can reduce crime and deliver different forms of crime prevention and justice.

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Background

Lorraine Gamman gained a first class BA (Hons) Degree in Cultural Studies from Middlesex University (1984), followed by an MA in Women’s Studies (1987) from the University of Kent. Her early studies led to the co-edited book The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, The Women’s Press, (1988, 1991, 1992), and later the co-authored work Female Fetishism: A New Look, Lawrence & Wishart (1994).

Gamman’s PhD at Middlesex University completed in 1999 explores the role of gender mythologies in perceptions of shoplifting and marked the start of her research focus on crime. Gone Shopping: the Story of Shirley Pitts Queen of Thieves was published by Penguin Books (1996) - a spinoff from the oral history gathered for her PhD and first presented Gamman’s fascination with lived experience of crime and also with criminal perpetrator techniques. It was reprinted in 2012 by Bloomsbury, with an extensive new afterword about the links between shoplifting and poor design.

Gamman worked as freelance sub-editor with The Women’s Press, and after completing her MA, she began teaching design in the UK at Goldsmiths University and Middlesex Polytechnic. She joined Central Saint Martins, UAL as a freelance Associate Lecturer in 1989 where she became Contextual Design Studies Lead tutor for CSM’s product and industrial design courses in 1991; subsequently setting up Design Against Crime as a research focus in 1999. Later she taught as a Visiting International Scholar at University of Technology Sydney; National Institute of Design, India (NID) and at numerous European design schools connected to the international DESIS (Design for Innovation and Sustainability) Network. She is a coordinating committee member of UAL DESIS, see here: https://www.arts.ac.uk/research/groups-networks-and-collaborations/ual-desis-lab.

Career highlights

Gamman is a leading authority in applied social design practice through her pioneering work at UAL with the Design Against Crime Research Lab and through her leadership in responsive design methods (Gamman & Thorpe 2006, 2011, 2016, 2018).

Award-winning anti-crime innovations include Stop Thief chairs, Karrysafe bags, caMden bike stands, ATM mats and Makeright anti-theft bags. Effectively interpreting and addressing offender techniques, these products are regarded as social design benchmarks – some purchased by Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) New York for their permanent collection. Outside of the UK, Gamman has advised on the setting up of UTS’s (University Technology Sydney) Designing Out Crime Research Centre and has been funded to brief criminal justice practitioners about designing against crime at Seoul’s Design Academy.

Since 2019 Gamman has been working with ECR Retail Loss on anti shop theft leading to collaborative research reports and action research projects (Gamman et al: 2020. 2023 & 2026). Since 2015 Gamman has also led collaborative action-research design projects that aim to build empathy and resilience in prisoners, encouraging them through creative engagement to see themselves differently. She has co-written up how creative processes help prisoners rehabilitate and use restorative understandings to move towards non-criminal identities (Gamman et al 2015; 2016; 2018; 2019; 2022; 2024; 2025).

Between (2016-2018) on the Makeright project she co designed anti-theft bags against crime with prisoners; alongside diverse research collaborators including outside the UK with Praveen Nahar and students from NID; also with lead researchers from South Denmark University (Thomas Markkusen and Eva Knutz) she has collaborated on co designing games with prisoners.

Collaboration and co-research


Lorraine Gamman’s most recent exhibition of collaborative outputs Making Time – Every Prison a Creative Hub (2024) can be found here: https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins/research-at-csm/design-against-crime/crime-and-justice/making-time-every-prison-a-creative-hub.

Gamman has previously co-led and co-curated over 20 national and international exhibitions and has written over 60 collaborative academic design papers and a number of books including Tricky Design: The Ethics of Things, Bloomsbury 2019 and forthcoming Redesigning Creative Justice, Palgrave, 2027. Since 2022 Lorraine Gamman has been collaborating with UK Prisons HM Pentonville and HMP Isis (before that she was also working with HMP Thameside and HMP Standford Hill) to deliver creative education, and to involve diverse creative practitioners and businesses in such engagements.

Between 2002-2015 Gamman was Vice-Chair of the UK Designing Out Crime Association, organising event and sharing her knowledge with crime prevention practitioners and police officers. From 2007 to 2011 Gamman was a member of the Home Office/Design Council’s ‘Design Technology Alliance’. She advised on a national strategy for Royal Society of Arts and Audi Foundation and created briefs encouraging designers to address real world design justice issues. She has also worked with the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London, where she part of a team that co-developed significant research funded projects and design outputs.

At Central Saint Martins, Gamman has been involved teaching undergraduate and post graduate Ceramic, Industrial and Product students for over 3 decades; building user and participatory design methods into student projects with local communities. She has also delivered and continues to deliver externally funded Design Against Crime client collaborations, research engagements and design outputs aimed at reducing crime.