Dr Nikki Clark is a Senior Lecturer in Packaging Service System Design at Loughborough University's School of Design and Creative Arts. Her expertise spans packaging design, service design, the circular economy, and consumer behaviour. As Director of Knowledge Exchange and Innovation, she leverages her industry and academic experience to foster partnerships and support innovation across the School. Nikki also supervises PhD students and serves as an internal reviewer and examiner.
After earning a First-Class BA (Hons) in Industrial Design from Loughborough in 2007, she spent a decade in the UK and European food packaging sector in design and marketing roles, driving sustainable innovation. She completed her PhD in 2021, focusing on consumer behaviour in Food-to-Go packaging for a circular economy.
Now a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM, IOM3), Nikki is an active member of the Midlands Packaging Society. She teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate design modules, bringing real-world industry insight into the classroom.
Nikki has published within peer-reviewed international journal and conference papers and has experience of presenting internationally. Her personal research programme focuses on the Circular Economy, Packaging Design and Consumer Behaviour, all relevant and active fields of research for Loughborough University. Nikki’s research has identified and developed the need for sustainable packaging systems e.g. reusable packaging services, that will have social, environmental, and economic impact. Developing an original programme of research, with a real-life urgent need to solve some of the world’s greatest climatic issues.
Using the outcomes of her PhD Nikki co-authored the successful NERC PPFTG research proposal. She is part of the Loughborough University team which was awarded around £1m in 2020 as part of the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge funded by UKRI, to help tackle waste plastic in the UK, taking on the role of Co-Investigator. The Perpetual Plastic for Food to Go project developed, prototyped, and evaluated a novel circular business model that combines smart-technology enabled products and services, and consumer behaviour insights to reduce the environmental, societal, and economic impact of food to go packaging.
Nikki is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). Nikki leads teaching on the finalist BA Design Showcase Project and the Signs and Meanings module for first year BA Design and Industrial Design students. She teaches across multiple Undergraduate and Masters modules including Design @ SDCA, Design Communications, Service Design and Graphic Design Contexts.
Nikki mainly supervises PhD's in the areas of: design for behaviour change / design for sustainable behaviour (applied in a range of contexts including food, electronic waste and packaging). She also supervises students researching practice-based methods for improving sustainable design and product service systems.
PhD completions:
Dr Fangzhou You (2022)
Current PhD Supervisions:
Betul Sahin (Principal Supervisor)
Zoha Khaniki (Principal Supervisor)
Saurav Roy (Principal Supervisor)