Professor Rachel Cooper, President of the DRS, passed away suddenly in July 2025. The DRS has created this remembrance page in tribute to Rachel and to collect memories from Society members who worked with her to advance the field of design research. 

Peter Lloyd, Chair of the DRS

‘You have to enjoy what you do’, was something that Rachel said often in our regular “state of the union” meetings to talk about the Design Research Society - President to Chair. She was usually referring to management, something that she was incredibly good at, and clearly enjoyed, but something that many find tiresome, stressful, and difficult. ‘What’s the point of doing it if you don’t enjoy it?’, was Rachel’s plain-talking sense. I always got the feeling that Rachel loved every minute of her life, cut far too short at the age of 71, but particularly the bits that involved dealing with others. Usually to help them in some way, by offering guidance and support, or otherwise to open a door for them that they hadn’t quite seen. The fact that she did this so effortlessly, with humour and without fuss or ego getting in the way, is testament to her extraordinary capability. She took pleasure and enjoyment in the success of others.

Rachel started her academic life studying graphic design and typography at Staffordshire Polytechnic (now Staffordshire University) but she was someone who very quickly saw bigger connections and possibilities related to her subject, particularly in the area of design management, an emerging discipline in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, and one that she pioneered. Her early papers published in Design Studies explored the effect of technology on design practices and methods, broadening out into looking at the effectiveness of guidelines for information designers, before then turning to the larger contexts of the British design industry. As a researcher, she rode the wave of British design through the 1980’s and saw that design was nothing without good direction and management. Her research focussed on practical things that could be shown to work, but practical things that also mattered. She was quick to embrace sustainable design and fields of application like healthcare and policy. Her work was almost always collaborative. I’m sure she would play down her role in any collaboration, but so many papers and books authored with different people would tell a different story. She was the key to success. 

More than a researcher, then a supervisor, then a manager, she embodied precisely what she found in her research. Her ‘design through management’ allowed her to create much bigger structures for research - a new journal in The Design Journal, a new community and conference series in the European Academy of Design, and latterly a new centre to develop design research at Imagination at Lancaster University. She was a small ‘p’ politician in her effortless ability to connect and persuade, but a big ‘P’ politician when it came to following through on finance, ambition, and, well, good design. What marks her out as distinctive in the design research community, as well as other communities, was her ability to do difficult political work on behalf of, not just design research, but design more generally. We have lost a significant ambassador and architect for the discipline. People like Rachel are in very short supply. 

Rachel enjoyed telling stories about some of her early bureaucratic interactions with the DRS. Though not exactly shunned, the sceptical responses she received about her ideas and proposals had the opposite effect of spurring her to create and build her own design research community. We were lucky in 2017 when she accepted the invitation to become president of the Society and benefit from the experiences she had made for herself.

I cannot end without commenting that Rachel achieved what she did as a female researcher and academic. Something that is difficult to understate. Starting off in design research in the early 1980s, she would have been surrounded almost entirely by very opinionated men. Of course, Rachel was not without her own forthright opinions,  but finding a unique research path through unconscious barriers and invisible hierarchies not just to be taken seriously, but to flourish, and to do so though leadership that didn’t obviously upset or disrupt people, is remarkable. Her professionalism and dignity are qualities that I think are underplayed. She showed how leadership could be developmental and committed, mentoring a whole generation of female design (research) leaders, as well as many men, myself included. Rachel was a people person, regardless of gender.

The Design Research Society has lost a president but gained a memory that will shine bright, for many years to come, through the countless people that Rachel influenced during her astonishing life. I will miss her very much.

Robin Roy, DRS Fellow

Rachel was an extremely distinguished teacher, researcher and public academic. The DRS was very fortunate to have had her as its President. Despite all her achievements, Rachel was modest, approachable and friendly. Her premature passing is a tragic loss to the DRS, the worlds of creative and sustainable design research and the people who knew her.  

Professor Tracy Bhamra, Provost & Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global) & Professor of Design for Sustainability, Royal Holloway, University of London
DRS Chair (2016-2019)

From a personal perspective, I find this very hard to write as I still cannot believe that Rachel has gone. I have known Rachel since 1997, I first met her when she was at Salford University, and I was a post-doctoral researcher at Cranfield University. I was collaborating with one of her post-doctoral researchers as part of my first funded research project. From our first meeting, she made a huge impression on me, giving me advice on the project itself and how to engage our industry partners more fully. These first lessons were so useful as I started my career in academia. She was also the first female academic I had met in my field, and so she instantly became a great role model and mentor for me. Over the years, the conversations I had with her focussed on topics as wide ranging as being a working mother, how to juggle everything in life, how to get design research funded and what types of publications to prioritise. I can honestly say that I would not be where I am today without Rachel’s mentorship, as she gave me the confidence to pursue many different opportunities. Her advice to “just go for it if it is something that you are interested in” has stood me in good stead over the years!

It is interesting to reflect that through all the time that I knew Rachel, we never actually worked on the same research project or published together. I think that is testament to her unending generosity, she was always happy to help and support people even though she was not going to benefit directly.

In later years, we worked closely together as part of the Design Research Society. In 2017, I was very pleased as Chair of the DRS that she accepted the position of President. I knew that her vision and insight in design research would help the Society go from strength to strength. The DRS is a very different organisation than it was when I first became a member of Council in 2008, and Rachel was very influential in this change.

Rachel was an astonishing force in Design Research and in UK academia more widely. She will be missed hugely by everyone who knew her.