Professor Alaster Yoxall Inaugural Lecture

Packaging is here to stay, but at what cost? From cooking to cleaning to personal hygiene, much of what we use comes in a jar, a tin, box, tube, or pouch.

Packaging has, amongst other things, reduced the cost of our food and increased our leisure time, changing the way we live, work and shop. This all sounds amazing, right? Well, our relationship with packaging is changing. We’re seeing packaging waste everywhere we go – and now we know it’s in our seas and oceans too.

As society rapidly ages, packaging is also often difficult, fiddly and sometimes impossible to use for those with arthritis or other chronic conditions. So what’s the solution?

In his upcoming professorial lecture, Alaster Yoxall (Professor of Packaging Ergonomics) will consider packaging’s future: its look, what it’s made of, and how we use it. He’ll also discuss its impact on our planet, our society, and our personal lives.

Join us on Wednesday 27 September as we unpack packaging.

Bio Alaster is a Professor of Packaging Ergonomics in Sheffield Hallam’s Art, Design and Media Research Centre (ADMRC). Increasingly the issue of packaging ‘usability’ has become a major concern for the packaging industry and Alaster is involved in several projects developing a fundamental knowledge of how users interact with consumer packaging.

He’s helped produced ISO guidelines on accessible design of packaging and has worked with academia and industry on the future of packaging design.