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Third quarter: conversations to capture diverse voices

Posted on 7 June 2014

In the last few months, I've been organising and participating in a number of research engagement events, for discussing aspects of the fellowship work.

This month, together with David Kirk, John Vines and John Bowers at Culture Lab, I am organising an expert panel discussion at DRS 2014 in Umea, Sweden, entitled Design for Dialogue: Making Sense of Diverse Voices and Technological Imaginaries. This event is part of the ‘Conversation’ programme at the conference.

Over the last decade, design processes have come to prominence as a means of integrating knowledge in complex domains and communicating the potential implications of ineffable ideas and emerging technologies (e.g. synthetic biology, nano-engineering or smart cities) to broad and diverse audiences. Such audiences may include the public with differing vested interests, and technology research teams engaging diverse sets of expertise that present complex challenges for collaboration. The Conversation at DRS 2014 addresses this communicative potential for design in knowledge integration.

This event will engage expert perspectives from the international HCI community as Discussants to address key research questions of the fellowship inquiry: Our Discussants are: Thomas Binder, Tobie Kerridge, Bas Raijmakers, Veronica Ranner, and Tim Regan. The above image is reproduced here courtesy of Veronica Ranner.

I am also co-chairing the Research through Design 2015 conference, alongside my colleague John Vines. RTD 2015 will establish an new and innovative format for supporting practice-based design research. RTD 2015 will take place in Cambridge, UK on 25th to 27th March 2015, and the first Submissions deadline is 4th July 2014.

Other fellowship-related engagement activities are more local. I recently guest lectured on Newcastle University PhD seminar series ‘Being a Specialist in a Complex World’, aimed at supporting students to develop interdisciplinary practice and engage with diverse research stakeholders.

I was also involved in a PhD student initiative called Nomadic Salon: a collaborative, student-led partnership of doctoral students at Northumbria and Sunderland universities, providing a critical platform for discussing practice-led research methodologies across creative disciplines.