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Roger Coleman headshot

Professor Emeritus Roger Coleman

  • Professor Emeritus, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design

An art and design activist, committed to making art and design accessible and understandable to all, Roger worked in RCA 1991-2008 on design and ageing.

Joining the RCA in 1991, he led the RCA’s influential research initiatives in design and ageing, inclusive design and design for patient safety; initially as a Senior Research Fellow, then Professor of Inclusive Design and later as chair of the centre’s Board of Advisers.

Roger has worked with the UK government and the NHS on the implementation of inclusive design and design for patient safety at both practical and strategic levels. He has also established influential networks linking designers, researchers and NGOs and major companies around the world.

As an art and design activist, committed to making art and design accessible and understandable to all, Roger was a founder and later board member of ground-breaking community arts group Welfare State International (1968-2006).

In the 1980s, as a director of one of the Greater London Council’s Technology Networks, he pioneered a radical, new approach to designing products and services for older and disabled people, including the ergonomic and demographic research behind BT’s big button phone.

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  • In 1995 the RCA was awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in recognition of Roger’s work.
  • He was the recipient of a Ron Mace Universal Design Award in 2000 and a Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education in 2001.
  • In 2005 he was awarded the President’s Medal of the Ergonomics Society 2005.
  • In 2010 he was awarded the William Floyd Award of the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors.
  • In 2012 he was made an Honorary Doctor of the Catholic University of Leuven in recognition of his work on design and ageing.

Using photography to explore the impact of modern agriculture and urban demands on the rural landscape, he documented the Cambridgeshire Fens over 20 years, resulting in a series of exhibitions from 2004 on. This also prompted his lifetime interest in the growing separation between skilled work, craftsmanship and art practice and informed his 1988 book The Art of Work and his 1992 William Morris Society Kelmscott Lecture By Accident or Design. Roger was also cited in Tanya Harrod’s The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century, Yale U.P., 1999.

More recently, he led the successful restructuring of Cambridge Open Studios, a mutual association of artists and craftspeople with over 400 members across Cambridgeshire, which he then chaired for some years.

Now resident in central France with his partner, ceramicist Sally Reilly, he is President of the Association Christian Louis: clair-obscur which rescued, conserved and catalogued the archive of a significant 20th C. French photographer over 12 years until early 2026, when it joined the national collection of France at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône.

  • Coleman R, (2008). Evidence based design for patient safety: challenges and methodologies, Proceedings: Improving Patient Safety Conference. Ergonomics Society ISBN 978-0-9554225-2-2.
  • Harrow D & Coleman R, Design For Patient Safety: Future Ambulances.
  • Harrow D, Coleman R, Matthews E & Thompson R, ‘Smart Pods’; New Vehicle To Take Healthcare To The Community.
  • West J & Coleman R., Protection in medication: embedding safer pack design in pharmaceutical supply chain priorities.
  • Matthews E, West J, Halls S & Coleman R., Closing the loop: taking evidence-based designs into manufacture.
  • West J, Halls S, Coleman R & Lowe C., Resus:station: breathing life back into resuscitation.
  • Halls S, Cousins D, Coleman R & Matthews E., Safer drug delivery: Improving the design of infusion devices.
  • Halls S, Cousins D & Coleman R., Injectable medicines: From safe design to safe use.
  • Coleman R, Clarkson J, Dong H & Cassim J, eds. (2007) Design for Inclusivity. Hants, UK: Gower. ISBN 9780566087073.
  • Coleman R, Harrow D, Evans O, Kunur M, Halls S, Kafka D, Jones A, Crumpton E & Hignett S (2007) Design for Patient Safety: Future ambulances. London: NHS National Patient Safety Agency & Helen Hamlyn Trust. ISBN: 978-0-9556340-0-0.
  • Clarkson P, Buckle P, Coleman R, Stubbs D, Ward J, Jarret J, Lane R & Bound J. (2004). Design for patient safety: a system-wide design-led approach to tackling patient safety in the NHS. London: Department of Health Publications. ISBN 1-84182-765-7.
  • Clarkson J, Coleman R, Keates S & Lebbon C (2003). Inclusive Design: design for the whole population. London: Springer Verlag. ISBN 978-1-85233-700-1.
  • Coleman R. (1998). The Art of Work: an epitaph to skill. (Japanese edition, revised with additional chapters). Tokyo: Agne. ISBN 4-900508-08-x.
  • Coleman R., ed. (1997). Design für die Zukunft. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag. ISBN-10: 3770141873, ISBN-13: ‎978-3770141876.
  • Coleman R. (1994). The Case for Inclusive Design - an overview. Proceedings of the 12th Triennial Congress, International Ergonomics Association and the Human Factors Association of Canada, 1994. ISSN 0014-0139.
  • Coleman R. (1988) The Art of Work: an epitaph to skill. London: Pluto Press. ISBN 0-7453-0168-1.