Niels is the head of the research unit Inter-Actions, the research cluster on ‘Design, Care, empathy and well-being’ and also a design researcher and lecturer at the LUCA School of Arts. In his research work, he mainly zooms in on how people with high support needs and little means of communication can be involved in design research (mainly people with dementia).

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Next to a participatory approach, his work takes on a systemic view: how does an artefact and those ‘using’ the artefact influence each other and how will this change the care ‘system’ as a whole. Niels is also the co-founder of the Dementia Lab which clusters research and educational activities and the name of a conference on dementia and design (fifth installment in 2021, proceedings published at Springer). He is the coordinator of HOMEDEM, a EU Marie Curie Doctoral Network on care and design for people with dementia. He is a reviewer for numerous journals and conferences and has been on the program committee and organising committee of the Participatory Design Conference and is member of the editorial board of the CoDesign - the International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. He has been active mainly in Belgium, but has been working in Hong Kong and Denmark as well.

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