Doctoral student at the UID and the Centre for Gender Studies.
My PhD research project explores potential ways in which the entanglement of design and its museums with oppressive structures might be understood and addressed in order to bring about positive change. It combines design research and feminist research to get insights into how established design museums have been shaped over time, how their interwovenness with systems of oppression might be challenged, un-raveled or at least be re-arranged. This thesis demonstrates that there is hope, and formulates characteristics and qualities that could make alternative design museums.
Before starting my PhD in 2019, I worked as a design journalist and educator. Between 2018 and 2021 I co-created the platform depatriarchise design (now part of Futuress) together with its founder Maya Ober. In 2019 I also collaborated with Lisa Baumgarten on the project Teaching Design that she continues to lead. I hold a Master degree in Design Curating and Writing from Design Academy Eindhoven, and a Bachelor degree in Communication Design from Academy of Visual Arts, Frankfurt am Main.
I believe that there is much potential in design education to contribute to shaping a more just design discipline that itself becomes able to take part in changing society for the better. My role as design educator is informed by both intersectional feminist theories and practices. At Umeå Institute of Design, I teach in the Bachelor program, as well as in the Master program Interaction Design. I mainly bring in a critical feminist approach to the project in question, support the students to develop a foundational understanding of norm-criticality in design and of feminist methodologies and epistemologies. I am always keen to bring in sources and examples from what is usually seen as outside of the well-established design discipline, like projects by activists or fiction pieces and popular podcasts.