Associate Professor Troels Degn Johansson is head of research and head of the Centre for Design Theory and Method at The Danish Design School.

Troels Degn Johansson’s research focuses on the relationship between aesthetics, design and new media. His particular field of interest is photographic image media from WWII to today’s digitalised photography and the new possibilities for image distribution that emerged with the popular proliferation of the Internet. He is currently studying how pictorial media affect our culture, everyday life and perceptions of reality and existence.

By means of aesthetic and semiotic analysis, Troels Degn Johansson analyses how new media and other types of design interventions contribute to the emergence of place, that is, locations that matter to people by means of use and experience. This may include places to which people develop an existential, everyday relationship over a long period of time or places of a more ephemeral character, e.g. tourist attractions, virtual environments, etc. Specifically, in the research field of ubiquitous computing he studies how the network-based computer as a medium can facilitate users’ connectedness to a place.

In one of his latest research projects Troels Degn Johansson has explored the nature of live outdoor webcams, that is, media that automatically and continuously render visible specific locations throughout the planet. These images are seen fundamentally as geographical image systems that tell the story of a site around the clock. Webcam snapshots can facilitate the emergence of a local identity while also adding to the story about the entire planet.

In addition, Troels Degn Johansson is involved in research into design didactics with a particular emphasis on the design project as a learning mode and its relationship to research.
 
Troels Degn Johansson’s teaching at The Danish Design School includes media theory, design and aesthetics, digital design, and spatial design. He also acts as a Ph.D. supervisor and a supervisor to post-graduate students working on small theoretical dissertations as part of their practical design education. Guided by the principle of “education-based research” as the most advanced version of research-based education he is continuously assisting students in having their dissertations accepted as contributions to research conferences and journals.

Troels Degn Johansson  has defended a Ph.D. dissertation on pictorial representation in web-based visualisation of change in landscape and urban space at the National Forest and Landscape Research Institute, which is now a part of the University of Copenhagen. He also holds an M.A. in film studies from the University of Copenhagen from 1994, and an M.A. in psychoanalytic studies in the humanities from the University of Kent at Canterbury from 1993.  As an assistant professor he was engaged in research and teaching in digital aesthetics and communication and computer games at the IT University of Copenhagen, where he also headed the post-graduate programme in Design, Communication, and Media. He also taught film and media theory at the University of Copenhagen.