Event Details

Lancaster University Management School is excited to invite you to our Inaugural Lecture Series, a special set of public lectures celebrating the careers of our newest Professors.

Each lecture features a brief presentation by one of our Professors, offering an overview of their research and a glimpse into their personal academic journey.

This year, the lectures are hybrid, so you can attend in person or online via MS Teams, making them accessible to a broad audience including staff, students, alumni, and the wider public. Each session lasts approximately 60 minutes, including time for both the presentation and audience Q&A.

An inaugural lecture is a distinguished academic event, marking a colleague’s promotion to professorship—a significant milestone in their career. These lectures offer a unique opportunity for our newly appointed Professors to share their pioneering research, highlight achievements in research, innovation, engagement, and teaching, and showcase the societal impact of their work.

The series is free and open to everyone. Whether you are an expert in the field or simply curious, we warmly welcome all staff, students, their guests, and members of the local community to join us in celebrating these academic milestones.

Lecture Title

Of Humans and Places

About this lecture

In this inaugural lecture, Professor Radka Newton will explore the transformative power of human-centred design and its capacity to rehumanise the ways we learn, grow, and inhabit the places around us. Rooted in empathy and connection, human-centred design challenges us to see learners as whole people and to shape educational experiences that honour their aspirations, identities, and lived realities.

She will reflect on how these same principles extend beyond the classroom into the way we design the ecosystems, communities, and places that support human flourishing. By looking at the networks of actors and relationships that make a place come alive, Radka will show how human-centred design can guide us toward more meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable environments—places where people feel they belong and where their potential is recognised.

Central to this journey is the belief that the lived experience of everyone counts as true data. When we listen deeply and design with, rather than for, communities, we unlock powerful forms of creativity, connection, and collective agency.

This lecture is an invitation to rethink how humans and places shape one another—and to imagine how empathy-driven design can regenerate both education and the places we call home.