Shane Porter

Overview

Shane Porter is Course Director of BDes (Hons) Design (Product, Ceramics, Silversmithing and Jewellery), Lecturer in Design (Product), and a PhD researcher at Belfast School of Art, Ulster University. His primary area of expertise is ceramic design, with a particular focus on material-led design education, critical design, and the use of digital technologies to extend traditional ceramic production methods. As Course Director, he contributes to curriculum development, programme coordination, and the development of learning experiences across product design, ceramics, silversmithing and jewellery.

Shane holds an MA in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art, a BA (Hons) in Fine and Applied Art from Ulster University, and a PGCEFE from Ulster University. He is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

His practice-based PhD research investigates the Leatherman within gay male leather culture as an embodied archive, produced through material, sensory and spatial encounters between the body, leather and leatherspaces. The research frames leather as an active material boundary between body and environment: a surface through which bodily sensation, material constraint, eroticism, orientation and memory are formed and experienced. Ceramic practice operates as a parallel material method, investigating this process of becoming through surface, pressure, trace and transformation.
Alongside his academic and research roles, Shane has contributed to the wider craft and design sector as Chair of Applied Art Northern Ireland, supporting artists, designers and makers through exhibitions, talks, workshops and sector engagement.