Designer
Violet is a freelance designer with a distinctive, mixed-media approach, blending traditional illustration, textiles, and collage with digital image manipulation and illustration. She has completed a variety of commissions, including developing brand identities for conferences, creating educational booklets and workbooks, and producing high-quality materials to support research, such as visual reports and workshop resources.
Researcher
Violet is a Senior Research Associate working on the EPSRC-funded Fixing the Future: The Right-to-Repair and Equal IoT project. Her current research explores the repairability of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, as well as innovative ways to engage the public in conversations about repair rights. Through her work, Violet investigates how Research through Design (RtD), Participatory Design, and Speculative Design approaches can be harnessed to raise awareness of the barriers and opportunities for IoT repair.
In her most recent project, Violet has developed Serious Games to create interactive experiences that allow people to engage with the complex issues surrounding repair and repair rights. The aim is to foster a deeper understanding of the challenges and possibilities for a more sustainable, repairable future in the IoT sector.
Violet is also a PhD researcher at Lancaster University, where her doctoral work and collaborative research focus on Creative Evaluation. She explores participatory and design-based approaches that enable organisations, particularly in the third sector, to measure their impact in more meaningful ways. Violet’s research addresses the often overlooked intangible and nuanced outcomes of projects, offering a design-led alternative to traditional evaluation methods. She is a founding member of the Lancaster Evaluation Group (LEG), an interdisciplinary team of researchers and practitioners united by a shared interest in evaluative practice.
Evaluator
Between 2019 and 2023, Violet worked as a Peer Evaluator with St Giles Trust, a charity dedicated to empowering individuals who are difficult to engage due to experiences of poverty, exploitation, abuse, addiction, mental health issues, or involvement in crime. Through her role, Violet contributed to the charity’s efforts to support and uplift those who have been failed by traditional systems of care.
In addition to this, Violet has also undertaken consultancy work as an evaluator with numerous third-sector organisations, where she has worked closely with teams to enhance their evaluation skills, practices, and overall capacity for assessing impact. Through her consultancy, Violet works collaboratively with teams to strengthen their ability to conduct meaningful evaluations, enabling them to measure and demonstrate their impact more effectively.
Educator
With over a decade of experience in education, Violet began her career as a Learning Support Assistant in secondary education, focusing on students with Special Educational Needs. In 2014, she qualified as a secondary teacher and worked as a Design and Technology teacher at Fallibroome Academy, Macclesfield. By 2017, she was appointed Community Manager alongside her teaching role. In 2018, Violet moved to Mount Carmel School, Accrington, where she took on the role of Assistant Curriculum Leader for Design & Technology and Art, alongside being awarded a TLR for Research and Development. Since embarking on her PhD studies in 2020, she has worked as an Associate Lecturer at Lancaster University and as a part-time Lecturer of Art and Design at Burnley Sixth Form College.
Education
Violet is currently pursuing a PhD at Lancaster University. She holds a BA(Hons) in Graphics Information Design from Westminster University, a QTS in Secondary Education from Reading University, and a Master’s in Education from Manchester Metropolitan University.
If you would like to contact Violet about a commission please email her at violetsareflowers@gmail.com, or about her research please email r.v.owen@lancaster.ac.uk, or for either use the contact form below.
Thank you!
