Vinícius Juliani Pereira
design researcher, PhD
My interest in understanding the social impact of technology design has made me a specialist in teamwork. I have facilitated over 100 participants in more than 70 workshops and co-design sessions held in over 10 institutions across Brazil and the UK, including the Energy Systems Catapult, University of Oxford, PortoFabLab, Instituto Europeo di Design/SP, and SESC Avenida Paulista. As an expert in stakeholder management, I am committed to navigating their shifting expectations while promoting more responsible and inclusive practices in human-centred design to address today’s global challenges.
Over the past 13 years, I have sharpened my graphic and modelling skills and developed a strong proficiency in visual methods. In 2018, I co-founded and worked as a designer at Elan, a multidisciplinary design initiative exploring the potential intersection between digital technologies, graphic design, and industrial design. I have also enhanced my critical thinking in research, drawing on images, diagrams, and prototypes as a way of thinking. I excel at using visual methods to collect, document, and analyse data and communicate insights in a more accessible and efficient way.
I have a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from the University of East Anglia (2021-2025). In 2021, I was awarded an Early-Stage Researcher Fellowship from EU Horizon 2020 to work on the GECKO project, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network. In my research training, I was a member of the 3S (Science, Society and Sustainability) research group and an associate student at the ARIES Doctoral Training Partnership.
I hold a Master of Science degree, having completed a dissertation on Artificial Intelligence and design methods at the University of São Paulo (2018-2020). During this time, I contributed to the research group Representation: Imaginary and Technology (RITe), where I co-founded the study group Experimental Reveries and Poietic Imagination (DEPi). RITe collaborates with the Centre de Recherches Internationales sur L'Imaginaire (CRI2i) in Grenoble, France.
My Bachelor's degree is in Architecture and Urbanism from Mackenzie Presbyterian University (2012-2017). As an undergraduate, I received an Introduction to Scientific Research grant from the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology funding initiative (FINEP) to develop research on computational design and digital fabrication within the research group Theory and Project in the Digital Era (TPED).

The world faces the effects of a climate crisis sponsored by the Global Minority’s desire to consume and accumulate. There has been a historical silence from creative industries on designers' roles in infrastructuring such unsustainable ways of living. Emergent technologies have only accelerated the urgency to act. As a design researcher and architect, I’m interested in supporting people’s autonomy over digital technologies, using participatory practices to democratise design, while raising awareness through visual methodologies.