GEM BARTON

Gem is an author and an academic. As Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton, she currently runs the MA in Interiors, having previously run the BA(Hons) Interior Architecture since 2015, and the design studio Near Futurists’ Alliance. Other roles at the University of Brighton include, Chair of the Athena SWAN gender equality charter for the School of Architecture and Design, and Inclusive Practice Partnership lead with a focus on decolonising the curriculum.

Having taught and published widely on the themes of; design fictions + futures pedagogy, gender + feminism, film + spatial production, narrative + storytelling, reality + representation, career + enterprise, interiors + architecture, one of Gem’s most notable publications is “Don’t Get a Job, Make a Job: How to make it as a creative graduate” (Laurence King, 2016) which Gem sees as a lesson in queering the recruitment process. Second edition will be available in 2023. 

Other roles include; Chief External Examiner for the School of Design at Glasgow School of Art, board member of RIBA Journal of Architecture, and advisory board member of IDAC (Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture). Working with Harriett Harris, Dean of Architecture at Pratt, in 2017 Gem published ‘Gendered, Non-Gendered, Re-Gendered Tools for Spatial Production’ in the Journal of Architecture and Culture issue ‘Styles of Queer Feminist Practices’. In 2019 Gem was awarded the National Teaching Fellowship from AdvanceHE, and became a fellow at the Royal Society of the Arts. 

In 2020 she founded the ‘Experimental Realism’ platform, showcasing and sharing her unique speculative spatial design pedagogy. The platform currently offers a free online Project Store, a free 6-month global mentoring programme with a speculative design practitioner, and in 2022 will see ‘Experimental Realism’ the book, published by RIBA publishing as part of their Design Studio series. In 2021 Gem co-founded the Office for Speculative Spatial Design (O-SSD) with her long-time teaching partner (set designer Amelia Jane Hankin); a Think Tank for research-led speculative spatial design, aimed at contributing to policy change, towards a more just and inclusive society.

For further information see Gem’s RCA profile and Linkedin.

Gem’s pronouns are she/her.