Dr Cathy Lockhart
Adjunct Fellow School of Design
Dr Cathy Lockhart is an industrial designer and an academic. She studied and worked in Australia and is a full member of the Design Institute of Australia (DIA). As design director of her own consultancy her design career focused on the development of retail merchandising systems for cosmetics, telecommunication, jewelry and computer peripherals. Pioneering the branded store within a store for a first generation video gaming company. Cathy maintains good industry contact. Exceptional alumni connections have led to graduate job placement and the establishment of an on-going award for graduating students.
Her research explores the implications of the changing gender mix of the student population in industrial design education toward a notable increase in women graduates. In particular she is interested in students’ educational experience and transition into the profession. Her PhD thesis at Queensland University of Technology (2016) Where are the Women? Women industrial designers from university to work place contains both an analysis of in-depth interviews with 19 female graduates from the industrial design course at UTS and a public exhibition of both their work and their reflections on being female designers.
Cathy lectures on design process and methods to first-year students in interdisciplinary design, in a subject shared across six design disciplines. Further lecturing into process focused subjects in the Integrated Product Design course of first year. In later years of the course supervising industry-derived projects to assist students in the transition to practice.
Cathy has taken leadership roles at the UTS School of Design through academic course management positions. She has held roles as Coordinator of Design 1, Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Unit and Course Director of Industrial Design. In these positions, she steered reaccreditations and refocused courses to address the global readiness of graduates.