I am an aspiring design anthropologist (DA) and design researcher working at the intersection of codesign, transition design, speculative/critical design, ecological design, futures studies, and actor network theory as an ontological inquiry into proposed and alternative futures. My research sets out to re-examine design as a world-building activity, critiquing the implications of dominant discourse within design and, consequently, anthropology’s traditional purview and productive role within the design process by viewing emerging practices, meaning-making, issue formation, and socio-material assemblages not only as a resource for design, but as an outcome of design. Conceptualizing speculative design and open-ended design interventions as a research device, and engaging it with participatory design events as speculative explorations of the (im)possible through a performative present.

While I graduated Summa Cum Laude and with honors in anthropology, I began my studies as a multimedia design major. Professionally I have worked in a variety of roles, including as a web designer, a graphic designer, blogger, ethnographer and UX researcher. I draw from this diverse background in all of my design projects and research endeavors. However, my approach to design is not as an anthropologist working in design or as a designer dabbling in anthropological theory, but to proactively engage design experiments with the realization that design is not merely a final, prescribed, solution to straightforward problems, but is a temporally and socially embedded arena that inhabits a wide range of perspectives of lived experiences where practices of use are continuously improvised and recontextualized. My view of, and research in, design therefore takes the product and process of design itself as a site of theoretical production and speculative explorations of the possible.

Location

Cary, North Carolina

Disciplines

• Digital Humanities
• Anthropology
• Architecture and Design