Biography

Before joining the University of Portsmouth in 2008, I was an Associate Director of BDP, one of Europe’s largest interdisciplinary design practices, and worked on a diverse range of award-winning projects; I have also worked as an interior designer at Hampshire County Architects and for Hassell Architects in Australia.

I have taught art and design in Secondary, Further and Higher Education and I have completed a full-time post-graduate course at the Institute of Education in London in 2006 and a PGCTLHE at the University of Portsmouth in 2009. I am now a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and I have recently completed an MA in Illustration.

As a Senior Lecture within the School of Architecture. I have coordinated all three years of the BA (Hons) Interior Architecture and Design programme and I have also been the Course Leader for the undergraduate and postgraduate interior courses. I currently co-ordinate the BA3 programme and I am also teaching a design module on the MA Interior Architecture and Design course.

As a practice-based researcher, I use collage, printing, and painting to visualise social, political and cultural narratives.  Current projects include Time after Time, a series of three hand-crafted artist’s books that illustrate selected elements of the extraordinary social, political and environmental global events that occurred between 2016 and 2021, events that are bookended by the presidential elections in the United States of America. I am also working on a collaborate research project Tyneham Unravelled, which aims to reveal the layered narratives of a village which was evacuated during WWII.

Other research is focused on pedagogic practices associated with interior architecture, including assessment for learning, collage as a methodology in the interior studio, and materials and the interior.

Website: https://racheeliza.wixsite.com/mysite

Exhibitions and Events:

Tyneham Unravelled 2022: a collaborative workshop investigating the stories of Tyneham using illustrative processes.

Flow: Brick Lane Gallery in 2014 

Research interests

Practice-based research:

Visualing social, historic and political narratives using collage, artist's books and scrolls; Visualising cultural narratives using collage, artist's books and scrolls; Abstract mapping.

Pedagogy:

Assessment for learning; Materials and the Interior, Collage Methodologies for Interior Education.