An ecosystem of impact: Meet our new Social Impact team
We’re committed to listening and engaging widely and with care — shaping our projects around the people who use them, and the clients and communities who support us in their co-creation.
Living up to that aspiration means challenging industry norms around how social impact is defined, perceived, and put into practice — embedding open, evidence-led, and collaborative research across our projects’ entire lifespans.
Together with our long-standing Head of Social Impact, Karyn Williams, our team of researchers is leading that charge.
Meet Dr Eli Hatleskog
Originally trained as an architect, Eli knows how the design process unfolds across a project’s lifecycle. But with years of research experience at leading institutions like the University of the Arts London, she also understands how to bridge the gap between academic theory and practice on the ground and amplify social impact within communities.
Based in our London studio, Eli is already embedded in live projects, helping us to formalise how we listen. She’s focused on bringing research into the crucial moments of opportunity from the very beginning of projects — often before a physical boundary has even been drawn.
Using research methodologies like participatory design, interviews and qualitative enquiry, mapping and spatial research, systems-informed methods, and design-driven research, she’s helping us open up the traditional design process — enabling us to learn from vital community voices long before we make key design decisions.
“What’s impactful to one person maybe isn’t to another. There isn’t a universal. That’s why social impact needs a thoughtful, situated, and responsive approach.”
Eli Hatleskog, Social Impact Researcher
Meet Dr Habib Ghasemi
Also trained as an architect, Habib combines almost a decade of design experience with doctoral and postdoctoral research across funded projects. His research examines how professional practice and wider research methodologies influence one another and how design can support learning and social change, particularly in the context of sustainability and low-carbon design.
His work connects decisions made around the drawing board with everyday life. By bringing questions of participation, care and accountability into this work, he’s developing ways to transform architectural practice and open up new possibilities for collective action.
Based in our Cardiff studio, he’s collaborating with Eli on the development of our impact analysis programme, and the evolution of our post-occupancy evaluation approach — strengthening how we learn from projects to turn our understanding of user experience into better-informed practice.
“Practice in the industry tends to be fast and pressurised, while research by nature is characterised by moments of pause, listening, and reflection. I’m hoping we can start to shift that balance.”
Habib Ghasemi, Social Impact Researcher
Impact starts from within
With each new research method tried and tested, Eli and Habib are developing ways to weave their learnings directly into daily practice at Stride Treglown.
For Eli, this is about supporting others to harness research skills to reach more impactful designs — a goal she’s pursuing by implementing studio training, as well as bringing student placements into live research projects to upskill the next generation.
For Habib, it’s about embracing the full spectrum of research findings — the positives and the negatives — to create a more ethical form of practice that acknowledges the complexity of contemporary life. A practice where we double down on what works, whilst holding space to learn and improve our designs wherever we discover friction.
This is all part of the team’s wider vision for the future. One where fast-paced projects can accommodate more reflective approaches to research. Where research tools are responsive and democratised so that design teams, clients, and inhabitants alike are all active partners in co-creating places that celebrate local life, enable long-term value, improve decision-making and strengthen design outcomes to ensure lasting positive impact for all.
“This is an exciting moment for us. We’re growing the team and embedding a research framework that is grounded in co-creation, evidence and local lived experience.”
Karyn Williams, Head of Social Impact
To find out how we could embed social impact research in your project, contact Karyn today.
