Gavin Renwick

Associate Professor, Design Studies

Office: 3-90 Fine Arts Building
E-mail: grenwick@ualberta.ca

Areas of Teaching and Research

Visual Thinking and Communication; Participatory Design; Practice-led Research; Sustainable Design; Cold Climate Design; Inter-Disciplinarity; Post-Colonial Aesthetics; Visual Culture; Indigenous Cultural Policy; Indigenous and Euro-Canadian Knowledge Parity; Circumpolar Studies; The Role of Art, Design and Architecture in Cultural and Political Self-Determination.

Biography

PhD University of Dundee, 1999

For over 20 years Gavin has taught in and worked through architecture, design, fine art and curation. His undergraduate study was in Interior Design at Napier College, Edinburgh, and his M.A. undertaken at the Royal College of Art, London (supported by the prestigious Darwin Scholarship). The University of Dundee was the base for his doctorate studies, resulting in the thesis "Spatial Determination in the Canadian North: A Theoretical Overview and Practice-Based Response," one of the first practice-led PhDss submitted in the UK. This was directly followed by a three year UK Arts & Humanities Research Board Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts. In 2005 Renwick was appointed Professor and Chair of Art & Policy at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee. Gavin has realized projects across Europe, as well as in Türkiye and Canada. His present work places the practitioner-researcher as a cultural intermediary between indigenous and metropolitan culture. His applied and curatorial practice aims to facilitate cultural continuity for First Nation communities, particularly in the Canadian Northwest Territories. He joined the University of Alberta in 2010.