Marco Mason

Marco Mason is an associate professor at Northumbria University's School of Design in the UK, specialising in design research for digital cultural heritage. He earned his Ph.D. in design sciences from Iuav University of Venice in 2012 for his thesis on designing for mobile visitor experience. His interdisciplinary research explores the digital transformation of museums, emphasising the role of design in addressing emerging challenges. Marco's work particu- larly focuses on human- centred design practices – including design thinking, service design, systems thinking, and strategic design – as well as visitor experience design incorporating applications, augmented reality, and, more recently, artificial intelligence.

Throughout his academic career Marco has been affiliated with several leading institutions, including the Iuav Faculty of Arts and Design in Italy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, and the University of Cambridge. He has led and contributed to numerous research projects. Most notably, from 2021 to 2023, he served as the Principal Investigator for the AHRC Leadership Fellowship project 'Designing in the Digitally Mature Museum: Refocusing Design from Technology to Human Practice'. Additionally, he was a Digital Fellow in the AHRC major project 'One by One: Building Digital Confident Museums' from 2019 to 2020. Earlier, he was the principal investigator for two prestigious EU Marie Skłodowska- Curie Fellowships: between MIT and the University of Leicester ('Digital Media for Heritage: Refocusing Design from Technology to Visitor Experience', 2012-- 2015) and with the University of Leicester and the University of Cambridge ('Design Thinking for Digital Heritage', 2016-- 2018).