Robert Crocker is an Oxford-trained historian with a passionate interest in the environment. He teaches the history and theory of design, and design for sustainability, in the School of Art, Architecture and Design at the University of South Australia, where he is Deputy Director of the China Australia Centre for Sustainable Urban Development. For the last ten years, his research has focused on the problem of consumption and its contributing role in our environmental crisis. Robert Crocker is an Oxford-trained historian with a passionate interest in the environment. He teaches the history and theory of design, and design for sustainability, in the School of Art, Architecture and Design at the University of South Australia, where he is Deputy Director of the China Australia Centre for Sustainable Urban Development.  For the last ten years, his research has focused on the problem of consumption and its contributing role in our environmental crisis.

His recent book, Somebody Else’s Problem: Consumerism, Sustainability and Design (Greenleaf, UK), won gold in the Axiom Best Business Books for 2017 (sustainability). Arguing against the tendency to individualise all environmental problems as a matter of choice, he emphasises the role of technological systems in expanding and escalating global consumption. His book calls for a radical change in how we design, make, use and dispose of what we make.

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