Doreen Balabanoff is an artist, designer, educator and researcher, and Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Design (Environmental Design, Design for Health, Inclusive Design, IAMD) at OCAD University, in Toronto, Canada, where she taught and served as an academic administrator for many years. She developed curriculum in First Year Design and Environmental Design, including a course on colour/light in the built environment, and an interdisciplinary study abroad course in architecture/environmental design w/ Will Alsop (London), and later with Fabio Quici (U Rome). She holds a MArch from UCLA (1985) and a PhD (Architecture) from University College Dublin (2017).

Her artistic and architectural interests centre on sensory, emotive and atmospheric aspects of spatial experience. Her practice-based PhD, ‘Light and Embodied Experience in the Reimagined Birth Environment’, was grounded in phenomenological philosophy and ecological psychology, and her own artistic research-through-practice on light, colour and environment.

She is a member of the Womens International Glass Workshop (www.womensinternationalglassworkshop.com); co-founder of the Colour Research Society of Canada (www.colourresearch.org) and the Global Birth Environment Design Network (GBEDN) www.gbedn.org; and has an active research-creation project funded by SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada) entitled Transformational Change for Birth Environment Design -  focused on reimagining the birth environment as a fundamental place of being and becoming, and creating a web resource for architects, designers and administrators of birth spaces.