About the centre

Last updated 24 November 2025

The ambition of the Centre is to enact paradigm change in the way materials are designed and developed through considering interconnected societal, economic, and environmental factors. The Centre takes a transdisciplinary approach by working with layers of community and in interdisciplinary partnerships, from the technical aspects of materials, including materials biology, computer science, engineering, advance manufacture, to the social aspects of materials, including social science, neuroscience, psychology.

Integration of materials into society is mediated by human interaction, cultural factors and perceived value. Thus, the Centre’s ‘designing for sustainability cultures’ approach frames materials research as a cultural enterprise, integrating technical developments with critical social and cultural dimensions to seek outcomes such as regeneration, wellbeing, and cooperation, which are essential for the successful, ethical and equitable integration of advanced materials into society.

Director

Sharon is Professor of Design & Materials, and Director of the RCA’s Centre for Materials Science & Culture. She is responsible for the intellectual and strategic leadership of the Centre, raising research funding, management of staff members, and management of labs. She contributes to cross-College business through a number of committees.

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Reader in Human Experience and Materials

Dr Bruna Petreca is Reader in Human Experience and Materials at the Centre for Materials Science & Culture. She works in the integration of human experience into new areas of materials development: circular economy, digital environments, on-site/on-demand manufacture, human health and wellbeing. Currently, she leads ground-breaking research to deliver new circular fashion-textile experiences and innovative digital tools as the Consumer Experience strand lead in the UKRI Interdisciplinary Textiles Circularity Centre and as Co-I in the EPSRC Consumer Experience Digital Tools for Dematerialisation for the Circular Economy project.

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Senior Research Fellow in Materials Circularity for Distributed Manufacture

Miriam leads the Materials Circularity research strand of the Textiles Circularity Centre (TCC).

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Laboratory Manager & Specialist Technical Instructor in Biomaterials

Kailash is a Specialist Technical Instructor in Biomaterials, as well as the Laboratory Manager for a new research-focused biomaterials lab situated in the Centre for Materials Science & Culture. He is leading the development of this lab, which will enable a pathway from ideation to experimentation all within a versatile space for biomaterial science at the College.

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