Professor Maria Lonsdale

Maria is a Professor of Information and Communication Design at the University of Leeds, UK. She has been a design practitioner and academic for over 20 years and holds the title of Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy | SFHEA. Her specialist design areas include Information Design, Visual Communication Design and Typographic Design. She also specialises in User-Centred Research Methods for Design that involve users in all stages of the design and research process (including co-design, usability testing and performance testing), as well as measurement techniques such as eye-tracking alongside qualitative data collection. Within Information Design, Maria has great interest in the use of visualisation as an effective means to make information more accessible and inclusive of all levels of literacy, ages, genders, languages and cultural backgrounds.

 

Maria’s work is of international impact. She is Associate Editor of the international design journal Visible Language, the oldest peer–reviewed design journal, first published in 1967. She is also a regular reviewer for Information Design Journal, and a book reviewer for publishers such as SAGE, Routledge (Taylor & Francis) and Bloomsbury.

 

Maria is a Member of the International Society of Typographic Designers | MISTD [an industry-recognised mark of professional ability].