‍Shaping more sustainable futures is the most important project of our age, and researchers across GSA are exploring what role the creative disciplines will have when working towards it.  Based within the Mackintosh School of Architecture (MSA), the Mackintosh Environmental Architecture Research Unit (MEARU), has an extensive track record of research and knowledge exchange in the field of low energy building design and performance, much of which is undertaken in partnership with architecture practices, housing providers and policymakers.  Also within MSA, the Glasgow Urban Lab partners with Glasgow City Council to address the ecological, social and economic dimensions of local urbanism and placemaking, including through researcher Professor Brian Evan’s membership of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Other research within this theme includes the School of Innovation and Technology partnership in One Ocean Hub, which addresses the urgent challenges facing our oceans, the School of Innovation and Technology's research on creative economies in cities and the Scottish islands, and GSA-wide work interrogating inequalities and social injustice.

‍Responding to our personal and cultural relationships to place, this theme encompasses a range of distinctive research in which creative practice plays a central role. It embraces the Reading Landscape group based in the School of Fine Art, and also includes research at the intersection of this field and Sustainable Environment and Economies, such as Amanda Thomson’s book A Scots Dictionary of Nature. Questions around contested social and political landscapes, migration, human displacement and explorations of self are also addressed in this theme.

Research within this theme draws extensively on archives and collections – including the GSA’s own – to unlock new knowledge on diverse subjects, from Scotland’s textile design heritage to feminist perspectives on museum collections.  Our research community’s work in this field also includes the collaborative conservation of archaeological heritage assets, and individually led explorations of public heritage ranging in focus from architectural taxonomies and historic monuments to street furniture and shipbuilding. Our contribution to this field is often unlocked thanks to scholarly networks and partnerships.

GSA’s leading research in health and care is focused on the user experience of the healthcare ecosystem, encompassing carers, clinicians and patients. Characterised by an interdisciplinary, team-based approach, the research is often carried out by deploying co-design methods in clinical and community settings – as with the Innovation School’s key role in the DigitalHealth & Care Innovation Centre, in partnership with University ofStrathclyde. In 2018, School of Design researcher Professor Alastair Macdonald received an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)/Wellcome Health Humanities Award for his work in this field, including a series ofAHRC-funded projects addressing hospital-acquired infections and resistance through design. In the field of Medical Visualisation, researchers at the School of innovation and Technology developed the pioneering Definitive Human: a highly accurate, 3D digital interactive model of the entire human anatomy for use in anatomy teaching.