Joe McCullagh  

Joe McCullagh is Head of Design and Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching at the Manchester School of Art. He joined the school in October 2010. Previously he was the Head of Art with Directorships in Graduate Education, Research and Enterprise at the University of Huddersfield.

Joe originally studied Fine Art at Trent Polytechnic gaining a first-class degree in painting, drawing and print-making. Like many art graduates Joe built up a ‘portfolio career’ working in related fields of the arts. However, he changed his career path when relocating to Manchester in 1989, developing a career in graphic design predominantly working within educational publishing. In 1992 he became a freelance graphic design consultant based in London, continuing to mainly specialise within educational publishing for a number of clients whilst also working on broad range of graphic design work. In 1997, Joe completed an MA in Design and Media at the University of Westminster where he specialised in interactive design. Subsequently, he went on to design for a range of clients working on design projects in CD-ROM design, and latterly interactive design for the web.

Joe has held academic positions at the London College of Fashion, Tower Hamlets College, Coventry University and Nottingham Trent University. He continued to work as a freelance designer until 2004 where projects became more focused on design for social responsibility.

Joe’s research and expertise are in pedagogy, specifically international and cross-cultural design education. He has been invited internationally to lecture and run workshops on this subject. Joe has also exhibited graphic arts work throughout the UK, South Korea, China, the USA and Cuba.

Current personal research projects have been based on a study of the aesthetics and phenomenology of pictorial ‘inbetweenness’ within cross-cultural art and design education and practice. He is currently working on a book proposal with Dr Tongyu Zhou on Chinese Design.