My wife Rachel Cooper, who has died aged 71 of gallbladder cancer, was one of Britain’s leading design management academics. Her major contributions were to socially responsible design, sustainable urban environments, general policy and anti-crime schemes. She was an adviser to UK research councils and many international boards.
Born in Derby, to Elizabeth and David Withers, both of whom where local civil servants, Rachel suffered many personal tragedies in her teenage years, with her father dying of leukaemia at 42, her brother, Rod, being involved in a vehicle crash that led to his death at 19, and her grandmother being hit and killed by a car at around the same time.
Her parents had always emphasised the importance of education; after John Port school (now the John Port Spencer academy), in Etwall, Derbyshire, Rachel studied for a graphic design and typography degree at North Staffordshire Polytechnic (now the University of Staffordshire) in Stoke, graduating in the early 1970s. She married at 21, but the relationship failed. She was appointed a research assistant at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University in the late 1970s.
In 1980 Rachel travelled to Germany and Switzerland on a Churchill fellowship, looking at the change happening in the printing industry and especially the advent of computers and word-processing. The fellowship led her to complete a PhD in design, among the first women in the UK to be awarded a doctorate in that subject. We met in 1980, when Rachel helped me with a research project on stress, and married in 1984. She completed her PhD viva only weeks before having our first baby, Laura.
Rachel formed a team at Salford University, which she joined in 1990, and received a chair in design management. She was then recruited by Lancaster University in 2006, to be founding director of Imagination Lancaster, a pioneering research centre.
She was president of the Design Research Society, and in 1995 became the founding president of the European Academy of Design. She was also the founding editor of the Design Journal, and series editor of Routledge’s significant Design for Social Responsibility series.
In 2013 she was appointed OBE for services to education, and in 2015 was the recipient of the Sir Misha Black award for innovation in design education. She also served on the board of the Royal College of Art.
Rachel was a dedicated and generous leader and mentor, fostering new generations of researchers. She loved planning and planting her garden (with me as her apprentice).
Rachel is survived by me and our children, Laura and Sarah, and four grandchildren.