ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on her experience being a non-designer in a design school and how she has a crafted a unique role for herself, culminating with promotion to Professor of Design Psychology in 2019. However, the author believes that her experience – as a non-designer who has crafted a successful career in a design school and reached the rank of full professor – is evidence that transdisciplinary appointments can work. The author begins with a discussion about the changing role of disciplines and disciplinary knowledge, and why transdisciplinary appointments such as mine may become more common, before she reflects on the origins, advantages and disadvantages of this transdisciplinary appointment, and her learnings and misadventures in crossing disciplinary tribal boundaries. Given that most honestly self-reflective academics report experiencing “imposter syndrome” when they have trained in the discipline, imagine, for a moment, the author experience.
