Academic Staff
Dr. Sven Mehzoud 
Spatial Design Subject Leader
Associate Professor, Spatial Design, Ngā Pae Māhutonga – The School of Design
Sven leads the Spatial Design program at Massey’s Design School in Wellington. Sven and the spatial teaching team have developed an exciting new program that offers students an educational experience in new and emerging spatial practices and professions while maintaining a foundation in the traditional design competencies. He has taught interior architecture and spatial design for over 20 years and has managed design programs in both New Zealand and Australia. His creative work lies at the intersection of exhibition, scenography, and interior architectural design with a particular interest and passion for migration and identity topics and what this means for museum exhibitions. Projects are often collaborative, and are undertaken as commissioned or invited exhibition designs and curatorial projects, ranging from urban festival designs, to public and independent museums and gallery projects, and engagements with councils and independent community groups.
Meg Rollandi
Senior Lecturer, Ngā Pae Māhutonga – The School of Design
Meg Rollandi is an award winning performance designer and artist whose critical practice explores the relationships between body, space and identity, and is strongly informed by feminist theory. Her work investigates the intersections of live performance and moving image, public and private spectacle and the roles of ‘performer’ and ‘spectator’. Rollandi teaches across all levels of the undergraduate program into spatial design studio, critical and contextual studies, enterprise, performance design and event courses.
Jen Archer-Martin
Senior Lecturer, Ngā Pae Māhutonga – The School of Design
Jen Archer-Martin is a spatial designer who works collaboratively across disciplines, with a focus on design that facilitates temporary installations, events, performances and exhibitions. Prior to returning to academia she practiced in the various fields of architectural, interior, performance and event design, and brings this industry experience to her teaching and research.
An emerging researcher, her work centres around the health and wellbeing of interconnected ecologies, and is closely linked with her teaching through the consideration of the spaces and activities of learning and practicing design. Archer-Martin coordinates and teaches primarily third and fourth year spatial design studio and research-based papers, as well as cross-disciplinary papers in the areas of critical studies and creative industries.
Dr. Julieanna Preston
Professor of Spatial Practice
Research Coordinator, Ngā Pae Māhutonga – The School of Design
Julieanna is an artist, writer and spatial designer whose work spans site-responsive live art performances, installations, moving image and textual expression known as performance writing, site-writing or art-writing. Her practice considers material ethics, vitality and agency related to new materialist and posthuman philosophy. Often speculative, these works are infused with subjectivity and the politics of emotions specific to cultural and environmental issues of a place.
Supported by residencies, awards and invitations, her creative works have been presented in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden, UK and USA. Her written scholarship extends to international audiences in peer-reviewed books, chapters, and articles by highly-regarded publishers such as Bloomsbury, Intellect, Wiley and AADR. Julieanna is a supervisor to PhD, MFA, MDes and BDes (hons) students.
Dr. Jacquie Naismith
Senior Lecturer, Ngā Pae Māhutonga – The School of Design
Dr. Jacquie Naismith is a design theorist, writer and maker. She engages in interdisciplinary design research with a particular focus on design as agent of social and technological innovation and change. Her current research focuses on the social role of design in the formation of recreational places. Her concern is with the symbolic relationships between the visual representation of places, their built and natural environments, and the meaning of leisure places for those who use them. Jacquie Naismith primarily teaches into the Postgraduate Diploma of Design, the Master of Design and critical and contextual studies.
Stuart Foster
Senior Lecturer, Ngā Pae Māhutonga – The School of Design
Stuart Foster is a designer and researcher specialising in the emerging fields of digital interactive spatial environments and digital fabrication technologies. Foster’s research focuses on emerging technologies through the application of virtual modelling, visualising and sensing technologies to create interactive spatial environments. The founding principles of his research are drawn from architecture, phenomenology of perception and haptic technologies.
Georgina Stokes
Lecturer, Ngā Pae Māhutonga – The School of Design
Georgina Stokes (Ngāi Tahu) is a spatial designer and lecturer with a specialisation in spatial mapping and visualisation techniques. Her creative-based research explores the future of our workplaces in Aotearoa through Mātauranga Māori design methodologies within spatial design practice. Upon completing a Master of Design in 2020 Georgina discovered a passion for developing design processes/systems that question how we can better design with cultural context in mind. She strives to implement this kaupapa into her everyday teaching
Guest Tutors:
Dr. Kate Linzey
Visiting Senior Tutor, Ngā Pae Māhutonga – The School of Design
K.Linzey@massey.ac.nz
Amber Strain
Tutor, Ngā Pae Māhutonga – The School of Design
Sophie Forsyth
Tutor, Ngā Pae Māhutonga – The School of Design
Last modified: August 15, 2022