Abstract

“Being embodied is never a private affair but is always already mediated… with other human and nonhuman bodies.” (Gail Weiss 1999, 5). 

This practice-based PhD responds to a growing shift in experience design towards approaches that engage bodies—both designers’ and participants’—as central to design practice. Drawing on feminist post-phenomenology, particularly the work of Gail Weiss and Sara Ahmed, the research proposes encounters as a strong concept that articulates embodiment as relational, intercorporeal, and situated.

The research is developed through auto-ethnographic, practice-based inquiry across two collaborative projects: Stepping: With Performer Trainers and Climbing: With Routesetters. These under-explored practices are examined as forms of somatic expertise that operate through movement, participation, and embodied knowledge.

The thesis reconceptualises embodied design activities as Design Encounters—intercorporeal sites of practice dynamically constituted in, through, and alongside multiple bodies. In doing so, it challenges generalised and abstract notions of the body in design, and offers a feminist, relational account of how embodiment shapes design practice.

Reference

Robinson, Scott. ‘Bodies Inform: Embodied Design (As) Encounters’. Goldsmiths, University of London, 2026.