Sarah Pennington

Sarah Pennington is a Lecturer in Design at Goldsmiths, University of London. She holds a PhD in Design (2022), MA Curating Contemporary Design (Kingston University, 2014), and BA Fine Art Photography (Glasgow School of Art, 1995). Her research explores care and feminist technoscience in speculative design, focusing on inventive methodologies and ethical frameworks.

Pennington’s work bridges design and social sciences, notably through projects like Datacatcher (EPSRC/EU-funded) and Take Me To Your River, which engage communities with environmental data and river ecosystems. She co-founded the Interaction Research Studio, pioneering approaches like Cultural Probes and speculative prototypes, exhibited globally at venues like V&A and Tate Britain.

Her doctoral thesis, Care-politics in design, proposes feminist research practices to reframe design’s ethical implications. She collaborates internationally, contributing to conferences such as DRS and Web Science. Pennington is affiliated with Goldsmiths’ Design Societies Research Unit and supervises PhD students in feminist design and speculative practices.