Cally Gatehouse

Assistant Professor

School: Design, Arts and Creative Industries

I am a designer and researcher with an interest in distinctive kinds of knowledge design can produce and how that can help designers, researchers and citizens to navigate and understand a world shaped by network technology.

With a background in graphic and communication design, my work draws on a range of post-solutionist design practices and feminist STS to consider how design research practices can find ways to forging commitments to complex problems which resist easy resolution. My PhD thesis entitled ‘The Speculative Gaze: Design-Research as Diffraction’ recounted stories of dysfunctional wifi networks, haunted transcripts, camp machines, idiotic encounters, drunken screens, absent police officers, radio reporters, evangelists, and wearable data analysis to paint a picture of design-research as a practice that can translate speculative events into shared spaces of wonder and concern.

I am a HEA Fellow and teach on the BA (hons) Graphic Design and MA Communication Design programmes with a focus on research driven learning that support students in understanding design in context.

Email Cally

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

My research is centred on understanding the distinctive forms of knowledge that design can produce through encounters with publics and network technology. I have published this work at leading design and HCI conferences like CHI, DIS, RtD and PDC but I have shared my work through exhibitions and other forms of bespoke public engagement.

My research interests include:

Diffractive methodologies in Research through Design
Post-solutionist design paradigms
Feminist and Queer theory
Communication Design for Participatory Media

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Leaky Cups: Tinkering with Hydrofeminist Temporalities for HCI, Key, C., Gatehouse, C., Koepp, S., Taylor, N. 26 Apr 2025, CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York, NY, United States, ACM
Feminist Care in the Anthropocene: Packing and Unpacking Tensions in Posthumanist HCI, Key, C., Gatehouse, C., Taylor, N. 13 Jun 2022, DIS 2022 - Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, New York, US, ACM
Introduction, Vlachokyriakos, V., Yee, J., Frauenberger, C., Hurtado, M., Hansen, N., Strohmayer, A., Zyl, I., Dearden, A., Talhouk, R., Gatehouse, C., Leishman, D., Agid, S., Sciannamblo, M., Taylor, J., Botero, A., Gaudio, C., Akama, Y., Clarke, R., Vines, J. 19 Aug 2022, PDC '22, New York, US, ACM
Methodologically materialising hate: Incorporating participatory design methods within qualitative research on crime and victimisation, Gatehouse, C., Pickles, J. 1 Sep 2021, In: Methodological Innovations
A cloud, a gathering, an echo: Performing network technology, Gatehouse, C. 6 Jul 2020, DIS 2020 Companion - Companion Publication of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, ACM
A hauntology of participatory speculation, Gatehouse, C. 15 Jun 2020, PDC '20: Proceedings of the 16th Participatory Design Conference 2020 - Participation(s) Otherwise - Vol 1, New York, ACM
Coronavirus and the carnivalesque: What speculative methods can tell us about Covid-19, Gatehouse, C. 9 Jul 2020
Inarticulate devices: Critical encounters with network technologies in research through design, Gatehouse, C., Chatting, D. 3 Jul 2020, DIS 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, New York, ACM
CODA, Gatehouse, C., Pickles, J., Wood, M. Aug 2019, In: Crime, Media, Culture
Troubling Vulnerability: Designing with LGBT Young People's Ambivalence Towards Hate Crime Reporting, Gatehouse, C., Wood, M., Briggs, J., Pickles, J., Lawson, S. 21 Apr 2018, CHI '18 Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York, NY, United States, ACM