Alison Thomson, PhD

Dr. Alison Thomson is a Reader in Design at Queen Mary University of London. Trained at the Royal College of Art in the Design Interactions department, Dr. Thomson brings a design-led, practice-based approach to health research. Her work combines participatory and co-design methods with science and technology studies to reconsider patient experience as distributed across people, technologies and institutions.

She has a long-standing collaboration with biomedical researchers in multiple sclerosis, developing research and engagement projects that respond to patients’ lived realities and reshape clinical practice. Her PhD expanded conventional understandings of patient experience, drawing on more-than-human perspectives to illuminate how care is organized and felt. Beyond academia, Dr. Thomson collaborates with pharmaceutical companies, national charities and research groups to design service interventions in clinics and community settings, building infrastructures that enable more responsive, accountable and imaginative forms of health care, grounded in patients’ everyday expertise.