Interior Design Research Area

Jessica Bonness’s scholarship aims to improve career outcomes for design students and emerging designers in equitable and inclusive ways, and to make methods for achieving these outcomes more accessible and visible to educators: in the Interior Design industry and academia, representation, belonging, and equity are persistent issues. I use my classroom to investigate effective teaching and learning, particularly with an eye toward positively impacting historically marginalized and disadvantaged students. I share my scholarship through peer-reviewed publications, conferences, and I am often invited to speak about best-practices in these efforts.

Moira Gannon Denson is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed design professional. Her focus is on researching intergenerational housing and building connections between the classroom and interior design practice to foster wellness and longevity. A current project is writing and illustrating a collection of multicultural short stories to create a more age-friendly society while exploring the impacts of design on overall health and well-being. Through empathic design methods, she builds dialogue and encourages participatory design methods. She shares her research with local communities, presents at national conferences, and coauthors book chapters.

Salvatore Pirrone’s scholarship explores themes of ‘Work’, ‘Play’ and ‘Identity’. His art practice examines issues of phenomenology, materiality, and our relationship to the built environment, both physical and psychological. Pirrone has shown widely including Arlington Arts Center, IA&A at Hillyer, Sandy Spring Museum, The Atlas Performing Arts Center, Shepherd University, Maryland Art Place, Transformer, and Cultural DC. Salvatore has been a lecturer and guest critic at Florida Gulf Coast University, University of Florida, Parsons University, Corcoran College of Art and Design, Catholic University, University of Maryland, and George Washington University.

Douglas Seidler’s academic research focuses on the application of pedagogical research in design education. He writes about complex software like Revit and AutoCAD by limiting instruction to the most relevant topics. This instruction creates strong connections to prior knowledge, architectural graphic standards, the design studio, and the design profession. He has published three textbooks with Fairchild Books and presents at national conferences on design education.