Marking the 30th anniversary of The Design Journal, the Special Issue “Design Leadership, Worldwide Practices: Past, Present, and Future” is conceived as a tribute to the legacy of the late Distinguished Professor Lady Rachel Cooper, co-founder of the journal and a pioneering figure in the advancement of design research and Design Leadership.

In 1997, Rachel Cooper and Jack Ingram, together with an international group of design management researchers, created The Design Journal with the ambition of strengthening design as both a scholarly discipline and a respected profession. Three decades later, that founding vision provides the point of departure for a Special Issue that looks simultaneously to the past, present and future of Design Leadership.

Rather than treating Cooper’s legacy as a retrospective endpoint, the issue uses it to reopen a fundamental question: what makes leadership distinctively design-led, and what forms of Design Leadership are needed for the conditions now emerging?

Contributions are invited on themes including the envisioning of change and futures through design, organisational development, policymaking, interdisciplinary responses to global challenges, transformation in design education and Design Education Leadership Practice.

The Special Issue Editors are Heitor Alvelos, Brigitte Borja de Mozota, Özlem Er, Sotiris T. Lalaounis, Lisbeth Svengren Holm, Paul Rodgers and Louise Valentine.

Submission deadline: 1 February 2027.

Full Call for Papers, submission guidelines and timetable:
https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/design-leadership-worldwide-practices-past-present-and-future/