Dr Valerie Mace

Biography

Valérie is a Senior Lecturer in design with a strong commitment to academic leadership in higher education, spanning teaching, curriculum development, course supervision, and the enhancement of the student experience. Her work as an educator operates across interior and spatial design, interaction design, and user experience (UX) design. She is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and has received three UAL Outstanding Teaching Awards, recognising her sustained contribution to teaching and learning.

Valérie is particularly interested in the relationship between sensory design, place, and wellbeing. Her work is grounded in a qualitative approach that engages closely with embodied experience in specific contexts across constructed and natural environments. She publishes in peer-reviewed journals and contributes to international conferences focused on sensory studies, experiential practices, and design education. She is also a member of the Space and Place Research Hub at London College of Communication, and of the Design for Placemaking working group at the Cumulus Association, an international network of art and design institutions.

Research and teaching are deeply interconnected in Valérie’s academic practice. She employs experiential methods to support students in engaging critically and ethically with contexts and environments. She has led cross-institutional projects, including a partnership with Malta’s National Art Museum, where students developed site-specific responses to climate change, and a project in a dementia care setting in Milan, where MA Interior Design students explored empathy-led sensory design through direct engagement with a care environment. She also facilitates sensory workshops across institutions, including the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins in London, Politecnico di Milano, the University of Navarra in Pamplona, and ESDi in Barcelona.

Across research, teaching, and collaboration, Valérie’s work is driven by a commitment to socially and environmentally engaged practices, and to creating learning experiences that are thoughtful, inclusive, and grounded in real-world contexts.


Valérie is open to Doctoral supervision on the following topics: experience design, sensory design, space and place, experiential pedagogies.