Dr Marie Williams

Dr Marie Williams is a playful engineer, Design Council Expert, lecturer, TEDx speaker, and founder and CEO of Dream Networks CIC. Dream Networks CIC is an award-winning social enterprise that combines co-design and engineering to create playful, regenerative and culturally resilient spaces. It has provided play for over 60,000 people in the UK and Africa to date.

Maries work challenges assumptions about what play is and opens up spaces where everyone can experience joy and connection, positions users as change makers and ethically partners with technology to tackle inequity.

Marie sits on the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ Energy, Environment and Sustainability Committee, is a policy paper author, and is a thought leader on climate mitigation and adaptation through open space and circularity.

Through her PhD at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity at The Bartlett, she developed a critical co-design framework for outdoor play in urban poor and refugee contexts, grounded in design plurality, decolonisation, and a deep understanding of place, culture and materiality.

Marie has taught design, innovation and play at universities in the UK, Kenya and the USA, including the University of Bristol, the Royal College of Art, Yale University, ArtCenter College of Design and the University of Nairobi.