About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

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Charlie Mealings

Researcher, Challenge Works

He/Him

Charlie joined the Challenge Works research team in 2024.

Charlie previously worked as a design researcher in a variety of contexts, including for the Cabinet Office, University of the Arts London (UAL) and a number of research council-funded projects across different institutions.

Most recently, he received his PhD in Political Theory and Design from King's College London, submitting his thesis on the relationship between design and science, and the increasing application of it, to various kinds of social and organisational problems.

Now an experienced design researcher, Charlie's background is in political theory, especially democratic theory, with a particular interest in how, in the context of a global recession in democratic practice, democracies reproduce the social and cultural conditions on which they rest. He holds an MSc in Global Governance and Ethics from University College London and a BSc in Economics and Politics from the University of East Anglia.

Charlie has no fixed hobbies, apart from following football, but rather bounces from project to project in writing, coding, woodworking, gardening and general DIY.