Debbie Cook’s educational research studies the benefits and effects of structured, interdisciplinary group learning. This identifies and examines the significant contributory factors in facilitating the development of shared thought in a postgraduate art and design environment.

She is interested in how practices engage with one another, and in fostering new layers of discourse that challenge habitual approaches within the disciplines. Her focus is in how dialogue feeds into practice through the parallel roles of drawing and talking, and in how knowledge and perception develop in a similar way through each. Her research reflects on the frequently held opinion that voice is only used to articulate the ‘real work’, the work that happens by intuitively doing.

Debbie Cook is currently researching the role of the unconscious in the development of image-led narrative books.