Professor Heitor Alvelos and Dr Susana Barreto of the University of Porto, Portugal, will deliver the Featured Workshop ‘Design Education in an Accelerated World: How Are We Keeping Up?’ at The 7th Barcelona Conference on Education (BCE2026) and The 7th Barcelona Conference on Arts, Media & Culture (BAMC2026), to be held in Barcelona, Spain, and online.
Professor Heitor Alvelos and Dr Susana Barreto are both researchers at the ID+ Research Center at the University of Porto, Portugal, where they work across design research and its social and spatial dimensions. Their workshop will explore how design research can help us understand and respond to complex social and environmental challenges in interdisciplinary contexts, particularly by bringing together perspectives on the role of design in shaping both education and contemporary life.
Heitor Alvelos
University of Porto, Portugal
Heitor Alvelos is a Full Professor of Design at the University of Porto, Portugal, where he directs the ID+ Research Center at the university. Professor Alvelos is currently Vice-President of the European Academy of Design and a Member of Academia Europaea and the European Science Foundation. Prior posts include: Course Director of the PhD in Design at the University of Porto from 2011 to 2024; Chairman of the Scientific Board (HSS), Foundation for Science and Technology, from 2016 to 2022; Outreach Director for the UTAustin-Portugal Program for Digital Media from 2010 to 2014; and Senior Tutor at the Drawing Studio, Royal College of Art from 1999 to 2001. Professor Alvelos has led national and international design research projects since 2007 on the subjects of heritage, disinformation, media philosophy, and the ecology of perception.
Susana Barreto
University of Porto, Portugal
Susana Barreto is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto, and a researcher at the ID+ Research Center. Her research focuses on the intersection of design, crime, and security, and she is currently involved in the Center’s i.PLACING project titled Spatial, Visual and Social Analysis of Urban Safety in Transit Environments. She is Executive Director of the European Academy of Design (EAD) and Chair of the 16th EAD International Conference, Trust_Distrust, to be held in Porto in May 2027. She is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the International Academic Forum (IAFOR) and is part of the team working on the development and implementation of the European CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) Association.
Design Education in an Accelerated World: How Are We Keeping Up?
The workshop will address the challenges design educators are facing in a world that is changing faster than our curricula. It will touch on perplexing technologies, with AI at the forefront, shifting professional expectations, and how we have been managing to prepare students for futures we struggle to anticipate.
A contextual presentation will be followed by an open conversation and a hands-on activity mapping out testimonies and action plans for the following three fronts:
- Our classrooms;
- Our course curricula;
- Design practice.
These topics will converge in a collective position paper/manifesto for design education in times of rapid change, co-authored by those present who wish to participate.
The action-based moments will alternate with a joint critical reflection towards future publications on the subject of design education in an accelerated world. Delegates will gain renewed insights into the current fast pace of design education and contribute to novel ways of acting upon the resulting issues of this speed.