Dr Chloe Cassidy

Chloe Cassidy is a researcher, practitioner and educator in the School of Art & Design at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. Working in expanded fields of mental health and education, her transdisciplinary practice combines handmaking, strategic design, somaesthetic and imaginal approaches, and psychosocial models of care, creativity and transformation. Her work is grounded in strengths-based approaches and an interest in how design can empower others to flourish.

Chloe's doctoral research has advanced a new conception of trauma-integrated design and Bionian model of practices called Pathway to Reverie: a relational practice in which transformative growth emerges in the intersubjective spaces between designers and others. This model positions designers as empathic labourers and enables them to cultivate the necessary capacities and self-awareness that is needed to work in states of uncertainty associated with increasingly complex social conditions. Her commitment to embedding protective and compensatory experiences within design practices informs her embodied approaches to meaning-making, care and transformation.

Chloe is a recipient of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and a member of UNSW’s Big Anxiety Research Centre (BARC) and Society for Somaesthetics, a program of the Center for Cosmopolitan Culture. 

Her professional design work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Rosemount Australian Fashion Week, Hidden: Rookwood Sculpture Walk, and in solo and group exhibitions across Sydney and Melbourne. It has also featured in campaigns including UNICEF’s Designers Unite Against AIDS Blue String Appeal and on international platforms such as Artists and Climate Change. Her collaborative design work is embedded in public spaces across several NSW hospitals through large-scale ‘collective landscape’ murals co-created with hospital staff and community members. Her transdisciplinary expertise has also informed collaborative projects with the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation, Randwick Children’s Hospital School, Fairfield Multicultural Health Services, STARTTS, Opera Australia Choir Projects, the Exodus Foundation’s Kaleidoscope Art Program, and Rowing Australia’s GrOW program in rehabilitation and juvenile justice settings. 

Chloe supports emerging designers to develop research-led, critically reflective and relational practices that engage thoughtfully with complex social contexts. She teaches across bachelor’s, honours and master’s programs, encouraging students to ask meaningful questions, consider alternative perspectives and develop ethical, responsive design practices. Chloe is available to supervise higher degree research students—please get in touch to discuss potential projects.