Mission Statement
I aim to establish design, its theories, research approaches, and methods as a planet-centric, sustainable, and transformative practice that addresses complex real-world problems and aims to shape society – and to educate students for this future role.
Biography
Dr. Daniela Peukert is a Professor of Design for Sustainability Transformation at Tomorrow University of Applied Sciences. With a background in product design and a PhD in Sustainability Sciences, her work focuses on how design can contribute to addressing complex societal and environmental challenges through sustainable, human- and planet-centered design approaches.
She is an expert in design research, user experience research, and participatory design, with a strong interest in transdisciplinary collaboration and systemic change. Through her teaching and academic leadership, she equips learners with a prototyping mindset and empowers them to act as agents of sustainability transformation.
Her research explores how design enables sustainability transformations through more-than-human perspectives. She investigates how materials, prototypes, and emerging technologies can function as metaphors, mediators, and translators in processes of knowledge co-production that include non-human actors. Her work combines design research and sustainability science to develop embodied, tangible, and multisensory approaches to knowing, while contributing theoretical, methodological, and practice-oriented insights for transformative, planet-centered design.
Questionnaire
Where do you want to foster change and why?
I want to foster change at the intersection of design and sustainability, enabling more-than-human, planet-centered practices that support just and regenerative futures.
What or who influenced you during your professional career?
I have been influenced by constantly exploring the boundaries of design, looking beyond the discipline and discovering what knowledge and potential design holds as a tool for change.
We all have those significant moments or situations (success or failure); which one was yours, and what did you learn from it?
A defining moment in my career was realising how many people believed in me before I fully believed in myself. Mentors and collaborators gave me the space to grow and experiment. This taught me to trust the curiosity of design and to work with its unique strengths. It shaped how I work today: with an open prototyping mindset, in transdisciplinary collaboration, and trusting the flow of the design process.