Dr Julie Trueman

Assistant Professor

School: Design Arts and Creative Industries

Julie is a medically qualified doctor, an Interior Designer, Assistant Professor and Year 3 tutor on the BA(Hons) Interior Design Programme at the School of Design, Northumbria University.

Julie has a unique hybrid background derived from a former career as a hospital doctor/ Wellcome Trust Research Fellow for 14 years combined with a career change in 2003 to commercial interior design. Having worked on national and international interior and architectural projects in industry with a focus on leisure, this experience supported her transition to teaching when she joined Northumbria in 2009.
Her roles since have included external examiner, programme leader, international admissions tutor, member of the design school’s ethics committee and year tutor, with a lead role in exhibition design for both student and research-oriented projects. Julie has led on establishing a material sample library which offers a unique resource for students across the whole programme and she maintains an active relationship with over 400 alumni reflecting the important link between the standards required for a successful programme and its relationship to an ensuing professional career.

Campus Address

School of Design
Northumbria University, City Campus East 2
Newcastle upon Tyne
Ne1 8ST

Email Julie

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Drawing from her dual background, Julie’s initial research interests focused on spatial and architectural solutions to improve not only health outcomes and efficiency, but how our designs can also support compassion, dignity and empathy when designing for, and beyond, our final days. Over recent years Julie has established a unique relationship with the Bauhaus Dessau. She co-ran the Open Studio Programme at the Bauhaus, Dessau in 2018, 2020 and 2023, and collaborated with the Bauhaus in her sabbatical exploring student anticipation and engagement when working online with iconic institutions, using innovative digital ethnographic techniques as part of the evaluation process. She was subsequently invited by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation to contribute to “Schools of Departure: A Digital Atlas of Bauhaus Education after 1933” funded by the Ministry for Infrastructure and Digital Affairs of the State of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Julie’s ongoing and integrated research focuses on the spatial impact of learning environments, incorporating sustainability, biophilic principles and the proxemics of learning, for which she has been recognised with an Enhancement Project award and a Distinguished Teaching Fellow award (2022).

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Learning from Lasso: Team spirit and the intangible impact of atmosphere on studio culture in design education, Trueman, J., Wakenshaw, S. 1 May 2025, In: AMPS Proceedings
Place-Hacking the Design Studio: Contextualising Workplace Principles in Design Education, Wakenshaw, S., Trueman, J. 1 May 2025, In: AMPS Proceedings
Learning from Lasso: Team spirit and the intangible impact of atmosphere on studio culture in design education, Trueman, J., Wakenshaw, S. 3 Jun 2024, AMPS San Francisco: Learning. Life. Work
Place-Hacking: Contextualising Workplace Principles in Design Education, Wakenshaw, S., Trueman, J. 3 Jun 2024, AMPS San Francisco: Learning. Life. Work
Place-Hacking the Design Studio: Contextualising Workplace Principles in Design Education, Wakenshaw, S., Trueman, J. 3 Jun 2024, AMPS San Francisco: Learning. Life. Work
Rooms of departure: From teaching museums to empty walls, Trueman, J. 16 Nov 2022
Development of an ethical roadmap, Craig, C., Wallace, J., Montague, K., Koulidou, N., Fisher, H., Carvalho, L., Groot, L., Trueman, J., Lawson, S., Morrissey, K., Duncan, T., South, J. 31 May 2021, In: Design for Health
Design research to support ongoingness, Wallace, J., Duncan, T., Lawson, S., Trueman, J., Montague, K., Carvalho, L., Groot, L., Craig, C., Fisher, H., Koulidou, N. 2020, In: Bereavement Care
ReFind: Design, Lived Experience and Ongoingness in Bereavement, Wallace, J., Montague, K., Duncan, T., Cavalho, L., Koulidou, N., Mahoney, J., Morrissey, K., Craig, C., Groot, L., Lawson, S., Olivier, P., Trueman, J., Fisher, H. 25 Apr 2020, Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’20): April 25–30, 2020, Honolulu, HI, USA, ACM
Bauhaus Open Studio Teaching Models: Workshop, Exhibition and Publication, Adams, R., Trueman, J. 2 Feb 2019

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: AMPS San Francisco: Learning. Life. Work 2024
Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: Bauhaus Open Studio 2023 2023
Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: Bauhaus Open Studio 2021 (online) 2021
Oral presentation: Intangible Boundaries 2020
Organising a conference, workshop, ...: Bauhaus Open Studio 2020 2020
Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: IAFOR Conference on Educational Research and Innovation 2019: Digital Proxemics Workshop 2019
Publication Peer-review: The IAFOR Conference on Education Research & Innovation (Event) 2019
Organising a conference, workshop, ...: Bauhaus Workshop - Interior Design 2018