Laura Murphy, Ph.D., Associate Director of Research & Scholarship, Dr. Murphy led research, applied evaluation, and design education strategy for the Taylor Center. She promoted awareness and understanding of human-centered design for changemaking within the Taylor community beginning in 2011, when she became one of the inaugural endowed “Social Entrepreneurship Professors.” In that capacity, she developed several original initiatives that became integral to Taylor, including the Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (SISE) minor, the SISE 3010 Design Thinking course, the SISE 4050 Senior Seminar course, and the signature “Fast 48” weekend boot camp and the related SISE 6100 course for graduate students. With design thinking student fellows, she launched the “DT & Donuts” series of introductory workshops for the public. Murphy also provided custom training for organizations including the Advising Center, the Young African Leaders Institute (YALI), global health scholars, and NGOs.
As Director of Research and Scholarship, she amplified and communicated these activities through her role in implementing the Taylor Forward strategic plan.
Dr. Murphy held a faculty appointment in Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences (GCHB), where she taught courses on critical development theory. She was also affiliated with the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane, where she offered research methods workshops. Her practice and scholarly research explored themes of appropriate technology, community development and livelihoods, population-environment relationships, and socio-technical change. She lived and worked in rural villages and urban areas of Indonesia, Ecuador, Kenya, and other countries beginning in the 1980s. Her research was funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and others. Her Design Capabilities project elaborated a complexity-aware theoretical framework for problem solving, integrating the capabilities approach with human-centered, creative, and collaborative methods.
Her formal degrees included a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford and a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from UNC-Chapel Hill.
Fall Courses: SISE 6100 Social Innovation Toolkit for Graduate Students
Murphy held the Carnegie Corporation of New York Professorship in Social Entrepreneurship from 2011–2016.