Conference Programme FULL (1)

Transforming the road to leadership - Mentoring female placement students through the first phase of the
career pipeline.
Caroline Evers
In response to the ongoing trend of fewer women ‘surviving’ and progressing to senior management positions in UK
businesses and the lack of female role models for young professionals entering the workplace, this research aims to
develop a mentoring intervention that will empower and develop commitment from female workers to navigate and
overcome the challenges of gendered workplaces.
Considering how women’s life courses become gendered, the capacity of human beings to change and how gendering is
described according to Bourdieu, this research will explore how female placement students’ career expectations and
aspirations are defined by their habitus, capital and field, and changed by mentoring they receive at the first stage of their
career pipeline.
An action research approach will investigate how female placement students navigate the challenges of their first
workplace, the gendered barriers they face and the strategies they adopt, and how mentoring empowers them to
overcome and succeed in these contexts.
Considering the effects the gendered disposition (habitus) has on their career aspirations and how the workplaces look as
gendered fields – I will observe the effect of a mentoring programme aiming to build resilience, confidence and self-belief.
Observing how they navigate these fields, the strategies they adopt or implement and, ultimately, how their dispositions
change or not, as an outcome of the mentoring programme.
Using a critical incident technique, I will benefit from gathering data from actual experiences of the students as they
experience the work placement and contribute to gender theory, organisational theory and Bourdieu’s question of
reflexivity.
Whole Systems Thinking for Circular Economy Design Practice
Sara Li-Chou Han, Nick Hall, David Tyler, Phoebe Apeagyei
To develop the changing role of designers in the circular economy, we investigate the concept of Whole Systems Thinking
(WST) in design practice. Designers’ practices were examined not just from the product orientated perspective, but by
taking a more holistic systems thinking approach. Individual case studies of environmentally motivated fashion design are
presented, that each displayed differing levels of positive impact based on their breadth of design activity, and whether a
wider systems-based design approach was successfully incorporated.
The methodology employed a review of literature relating WST, and combined this with primary data from semistructured
interviews. Interview data from ethical fashion brands and designers identified barriers to the wider adoption
of circular economy fashion strategies. Current techniques employed to bring products to market and effectively
communicate their wider features and benefits to consumers were interrogated to establish where gaps in knowledge lay.
Designers taking a systems based approach are more congruent with the circular economy model and the wider skills and
attributes that enable such approaches. Academic implications of the research include the establishment of Whole
Systems Thinking in the training and development of a new generation of designers, to improve and enable positive design
decisions. Originality lies in developing circular fashion approaches that draw from and improve upon existing strategies
to create sustainable innovation and systemic change.