Profile
Aria Luan is a PhD researcher in Creative Arts at Loughborough University, specialising in jewellery and wearable design.
Her doctoral research investigates PanWan (盘玩), a Chinese material practice involving prolonged tactile interaction with objects, and explores how repeated handling, sensory engagement, and material change contribute to long-term human–object relationships. Her research brings together jewellery and wearable design, material culture, and relational approaches to design, drawing on qualitative interviews, object-based research, observation, and studio-based practice.
More broadly, her interests include affective and emotional relationships with objects, embodied and tactile experience, material transformation, personal attachment, and the role of jewellery and wearable objects in supporting enduring relationships between people and things.