معرفی
Dr. Debbie Maxwell is a Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media and Chair of Partnerships & Engagement at the School of Arts and Creative Technologies, University of York. Her role involves teaching and fostering collaborative initiatives, bridging academic research with community engagement. She holds a multidisciplinary position, integrating computing, design, and cultural studies into her work.
Debbie Maxwell’s academic background includes an MEng (Hons) in Computer Systems Engineering from UMIST, Manchester; an MSc (Distinction) in Animation & Visualisation from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD), University of Dundee; and a PhD in Design and Computing from DJCAD, focusing on “Traditional Storytelling in a Digital Society: the transformative power of storytelling across media.”
Her research explores the intersection of storytelling and technology in digital environments, emphasizing how narratives shape and are shaped by human interaction with technology. Key areas include participatory storytelling to foster empathy, encoding knowledge through oral and digital stories, and designing methods for documenting imagined futures. She employs interdisciplinary approaches, combining Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), ethnography, interaction design, social anthropology, and service design, often involving communities in participatory processes. A current focus is conceptualizing stories as “currency” to analyze their evolving value across media and contexts, from oral traditions to digital platforms and data flows.
Her recent articles reflect her exploration of design fictions in environmental contexts, future folklore, and participatory design methodologies. For instance, she examines how stories can address sustainability challenges through design interventions like the Beebots-a-lula project and investigates the transformation of traditional narratives into digital formats. Her work also delves into value constellations in design, highlighting interdisciplinary collaboration and the impact of design on social and environmental issues.
No scientific awards have been mentioned in the provided information.
In terms of grants and leadership, Maxwell has actively led and collaborated on several funded projects. She is the Principal Investigator (PI) for the AHRC-funded ‘Telling the Bees’ (2015–2016) and ‘Skills in Action’ (2014–2015), and a Co-Investigator on initiatives such as ‘StoryStorm’ and ‘Seannachies’. Recent projects include her Co-I role in ‘Listening to Voices’ (2015–2016) and the NERC-funded ‘Branching Out: New routes to valuing urban treescapes’ (2021–2025), which explores environmental narratives through interdisciplinary design approaches.
Maxwell collaborates closely with interdisciplinary teams and institutions. Her work on datasets like Extinction Studies: Imagining a World without Bees (2020) and projects such as Branching Out demonstrates her engagement in collaborative research networks aimed at addressing environmental and social challenges through creative and participatory methods.
