Master's Degree in Design Research
Feel, think, act: transform.
It is a pioneering, cross-disciplinary programme grounded in practice-based research. It offers a space for reflection in action, where design becomes both a method of inquiry and a tool for transformation.
Description of the curriculum
- Edition: 9th
- Teaching period: from October 2026 to July 2027. Final master's project presentation: July 2027
- Schedule: from Monday to Thursday from 4pm to 7pm
- Modality: on-site
- Language: English
- Price: 10.880 €
- Qualification: Master’s Degree in Research and Experimentation in Design awarded by UVic-UCC - Official title registered in the Register of Universities Centers and Titles (RUCT)-.
- Credits: 60 ECTS
Presentation
In a world defined by uncertainty and complexity, design plays a vital role in understanding and transforming reality. The Master’s Degree in Design Research at BAU equips students with the tools to critically question the present and to develop creative, transformative proposals grounded in social and cultural awareness.
This programme offers a space for knowing in action, combining rigour, responsibility, and creative experimentation. Students are challenged to conceive and construct design alternatives that respond to the pressing issues of our time (from climate emergency and social justice to the impact of technology and post-human paradigms).
Grounded in practice-based research, the curriculum follows a cross-disciplinary approach that interweaves perspectives from design, architecture, anthropology, political science, and the arts. Through collaboration, students explore research as a creative and experimental practice involving materials, technologies, and contexts.
As an official degree, the master’s provides access to PhD studies and promotes design’s social role as a driver of change—one capable of shaping new ways of thinking and acting in a complex and rapidly evolving world.
Key Concepts
The Master’s Degree in Design Research revolves around six key concepts that define its content, focus, methodology, and pedagogy.
Contemporary Thought
The programme draws on the conceptual and methodological tools of contemporary philosophical thought to decipher and respond to the ecological, social, and political challenges of our time. It embraces a critical, decolonial, and feminist perspective, encouraging the revision of dominant epistemologies and the exploration of alternative ways of knowing, feeling and making.
Posthumanist and Ecological Visions
The master adopts a posthumanist lens that questions the separation between humans, technology, and nature. By decentering the human, it reconsiders our interdependence with other species, materials, and systems—promoting practices of care, repair, and ecological awareness. These perspectives open up new relational ways to understand and inhabit the world.
Practice-based Research: Design as Knowing in Action
Design is approached as a way of knowing in action. Research emerges through practice, incorporating embodied, material, and social dimensions. Students engage in practice-based and experimental methodologies, where trial, error, and reflection become central to the process of generating knowledge through design creation.
Cross-Disciplinary Approach
The master fosters a broad, cross-disciplinary and non-hierarchical approach to design. Disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology, architecture, science, political theory, and the arts are interwoven, enabling students to explore transitional and pluriversal forms of design that transcend disciplinary and cultural boundaries.
The Political and Social Role of Design
This programme highlights the political dimension of design and its potential as a tool for social transformation. It invites students to engage with critical pedagogy, social justice, and transfeminist perspectives, positioning design as an active force for building more equitable and sustainable futures. Within this framework, design becomes an act of care and resistance, also towards technological systems that shape our social and ecological realities. Students are encouraged to critically question how technologies—including AI—mediate power, culture, and knowledge, and to explore creative alternatives grounded in ethics and collective responsibility.
Connection with Local and Global Contexts
The master’s degree functions as a platform for dialogue and collaboration, connecting students with practices, organisations, and networks operating at both local and international levels. These collaborations nurture a critical understanding of design and its ethical implications, while fostering projects rooted in situated, context-sensitive knowledge.
Syllabus
The Master’s Degree in Design Research combines core and elective subjects to offer instruction that is adapted to individual interests and the specialisation sought by each student.
This master’s degree is based on a sequential approach in which subjects are taken one after the other. Subjects are also presented as intensive blocs that offer certain specific perspectives of design, allowing students to fully immerse themselves in each subject.
Core subjects
Fiction, Critical and Speculative Design
Explore the role of fiction, speculation and game to create new material narratives.
Social Innovation and Collaborative Design
Understand design not only as a product or service, but as a democratic and social strategy.
Material Cultures and Design Ecologies
This subject allows students to create visions of radical social and environmental futures.
Design, Power and Society
This subject investigates how design can be integrated into power, and how design can become a tool to question power.
Research in Art and Design
This subject explores inventive methods for research in art and design, bringing multiple disciplines and tools into dialogue with each other.
Fabrication and Prototyping
Students experiment and conduct creative research with materials, machines, and bits from multiple areas of design.
Elective subjects
Students can choose two elective subjects from those on offer.
Ethnographies and Design
Students develop an ethnographic sensitivity to learn to observe, investigate, and inhabit the world in another way.
Investigation with Data
Research data and artificial intelligence and explore new methods of visualisation in the sphere of research in design.
Digital Design
Immerse yourself in artificial intelligence applied to visual culture with a critical vocation and creative outlook.
Design and Numeric Control
This subject generates learning environments based on the maker philosophy to acquire advanced knowledge of design.
Internship
Students are offered the possibility of working at leading companies in the field of design that work to meet the needs of the world of work and current social realities.
Final Master Thesis
The Final Master Thesis (TFM) is the structural axis of the master that allows students to create their own research journey and connect in different ways with the courses offered along the master course.
Through the Master Thesis students will be invited to choose among several specializations:
- Speculative and Critical Design: Design Thinking towards the Future
- Experimental Design: Digital fabrication and material innovation
- Socially Responsible Design: collaborative design and social impact
- Design Pedagogy: design for education
- Crosscutting Itinerary
The TFM demonstrates the student’s contribution to the field and their ability to communicate complex research for peers and the community
The Master envisions the TFM as a space to develop collaborations with external entities. Students can either choose among the range of entities suggested by the master or explore new collaborations to develop test and implement their TFM projects in a real context.
Projects
Digital Translation: Critical Study of Digital Design and Embodied Material
by Guus Vandeweerd
Regenerative making in a sinking territory
by Francisca Fuenzalida Gasman
de romerías, colmenas, fermentos y santos
by Alicia Monreal Ortega
Guest teachers
In previous editions the Master has included the participation of:
- David Benqué. Design and algorithms
- Paula Bruna. Art and biology
- Jorge Caballero. Interactive media and AI
- Gabriel Calvin. Art and creativity
- Elena Carvajal. Dance and choreography
- Marina Colell. Deep ecology in more-than-human Design
- Tim Colishaw. Audiovisuals and computer sciences
- Markel Cormenzana. Design for transition
- Solange Dalannais. Craft and arts
- Kris de Decker. Science and tech journalism
- Begonya Enguix Grau. Social anthropology
- Laia Estruch. Artist
- Maria Fernanda Moscoso. Sensory anthropology
- Sara G. De Ubieta. Crafts and design
- Adrià Garcia i Mateu. Design and activism
- Marina Gil. Critical Design and Research
- Barbara Grabher. Anthropology and gender
- Jessica Guy. Ontologies and epistemologies design research
- Lamisse Hamouda. Creative writing and performance
- Citlali Hernández Sánchez. Electronic and digital arts
- Jere Kuzmanic. Anarchy urbanism research
- Agostina Laurenzano. Biomaterials
- Isaac Marrero-Guillamón. Anthropology
- Federica Matelli. Philosophy
- Eduard Molner. Performing arts
- Gustavo Nogueira. Temporalities and narratives research
- Dorotea Ottaviani. Architecture and participation
- Lekshmy Parameswaran. Carelab
- Ariadna Parreu. Speculative art
- Maro Pebo. Art and biology
- Giuliana Racco. Art and anthropology
- Jaron Rowan. Cultural studies and design epistemologies
- Mario Santamaria. Art
- Roger Sansi. Anthropology and sociology
- Olga Subiros. Architecture and curatorship
Partnerships
The master offers the possibility to undertake a Master Thesis with an external entity, be it an association, foundation, ONG, collective, research institution or private company.
This will allow students to land their research into real contexts and learn how to respond to wicked problems and real-world challenges. It will also connect students with a professional and academic network, taking the first steps towards their profesional future.
Possible roles and types that the collaboration can take are:
- Offer space and tools for the research
- Offer the possibility to apply the research to a real context
- Offer the space and tools for testing prototypes
The Master also offers the possibility to undertake an Internship in one of those entities or others selected by students, in an ideal scenario of interconnection between the TFM Project and the internship.
BAU is committed to providing students with an education that strongly links learning with professional or vocational practice.
GREDITS
The Master is linked to the BAU Research Group GREDITS (Grup de Recerca en Disseny i Transformació Social) accredited by AGAUR as "established research group". The multidisciplinary group of designers teachers and reseachers, investigates the role of design as a driver for social transformation.
Career Opportunities
- Multidisciplinary designer
- Designer researcher
- Design lecturer
- Designer of research projects
- Transitional designer
- Social and cultural designer
- Consultant for environmental and sustainable design projects
- Coordinator of digital creation and manufacturing laboratories
- Coordinator of collaborative design projects
- Cultural manager
- Start a PhD
My BAU experience
Skills
- Formulating design proposals that integrate research and experimentation processes in accordance with the paradigms of contemporary design
- Applying methodologies of ethnographic research, both speculative and based on data to execute design projects of various natures
- Executing, prototyping and manufacturing of objects and design projects through the operation of numerical control and digital design tools and technologies
- Analysing the properties and behaviour of materials in order to use them appropriately and innovatively in design processes and projects
- Critical consideration of innovation and social transformation, participation and collaborative design, and other paradigms of contemporary design to facilitate the resolution of problems within the field of design
- Designing services, processes and objects that will provide solutions through the principles of open design and its fields of circulation
- Using the software specific to design by taking into account its applications and repercussions, both in the field of professional design and the field of research
- Understanding and valuing the political economy of art and design and identifying its value cycles, the social life of objects, consumption cycles and recycling in a changing social and economic context
- Applying the strategies of fiction and speculative design, using diegetic prototypes and provoking thought through design as an epistemic object
- Considering the material cultures of design and the many related traditions (philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies…) to conduct research through their objects and materials
- Managing the multiple work processes involved in the practice of design and integrating elements of research and experimentation
Doctorate Program
As an official programme, the BAU Master's Degree in Design allows students to subsequently enrol in a Doctoral Programme. Students have the opportunity to attend PhD sessions with the aim of broadening their understanding of research and what it means to write a doctoral thesis. The master's degree curriculum responds to the research interests of the BAU PhD programme, based on design and communication practices.
Admission and enrolment
Pre-enrolment and Admission
To apply for a master’s or postgraduate program at BAU, you must request your admission through the pre-enrolment process. Each application is evaluated by the program’s academic coordination team to balance the group composition and provide high-quality training.
BAU's master's and postgraduate programs have limited spots. The pre-enrolment process remains open until all available spots are completed. Therefore, we recommend applying early to ensure your place in the program.
Pre registration: from November 6th 2025 to September 30th 2026.
- Request an interview with the Master's coordinator
- Check the information about the pre registration process
- Download the pre-registration form
Enrolment
Once the admission is confirmed, you will receive an email with the result and the instructions to complete your enrolment and confirm your place.
Two payment options are offered:
- Single payment (2% discount).
- Payment in 3 installments, with no additional charges.
BAU students and alumni who have completed at least 50% of the credits for the Bachelor's Degree, Higher Degree in Design, or Graphic Design Diploma, or 100% of the credits for a Master’s or Postgraduate program, will receive a 10% discount.
Scholarships
BAU offers two scholarships for 50% of the total price of its Master’s Degree in Design Research.
These scholarships are intended to encourage, reward and provide opportunities for designers wishing to delve into experimentation and research in design.
Participation requirements:
- Cover letter
- Average grade in bachelor studies
- B2 level English
- Portfolio (optional)
More information about BAU Design Research Talent Scholarship.
The Master’s Degree in Design Research provides an official university degree and gives access to participation in a PhD program. The master’s degree promotes the social role of design and its potential as en engine of change in light of the challenges of today’s society.
More information about other scholarships and grants.
Quality
The quality of the BAU pedagogical system is guaranteed by various indicators and reports by the seals of (AQU, RUCT, EUC ...). Visit the Quality section.
Degree registered in the Register of Universities, Centers and Titles, RUCT.
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