cfp

Considering Doing a PhD in 2019?

I’m excited to work with new students at my new work place, RMIT.

My main research interest is design with & for care. Below are four broad project interests that I have for 2019, but feel free to propose a radical idea in relation to or outside of these, if you’d like. I expect there will be new project-specific opportunities over time; I will announce them separately via different channels. Also, it may be useful to have a look at some of my projects and wonderful research students I’ve been privileged to supervise to date, and see if our interests align.

I’m definitely looking for people who are curious, committed, creative, collaborative, and caring. In return, I commit to do my best to be an open, fair, respectful, and caring supervisor.  I see my Higher Degree Research (HDR) students not only as students but also as collaborators and colleagues.

Also, here’s information about the scholarships and application process at RMIT.

 

Cute! Kawaii! Awww!: Humanising Technologies in the City

Digital technologies are increasingly embedded in everyday lives of people living in urban environments. Active discussions and design of robots and artificial intelligence question how they are perceived to care and be cared for those living in cities. As importantly, they raise questions around particular anthropocentric design choices, one of which is how “cuteness” is used to make them feel more approachable, acceptable, or even loveable. In this project, we study the current cute-scape of technologies designed for “caring” in different cultural setting and speculate its possible-tomorrows.

 

Why We Live Alone: And Eat, Play, Work, and Sleep Alone

People living alone are on the rise in cities around the world; they are expected to make up 30-40% of all households in many countries by 2030. The ageing population is one factor. The rise of people choosing to live alone is another. At the same time, more people are dying alone. How might we better understand and care for them? What are the associated social, health, economic, and environmental impact? And how might we co-create liveable urban futures? These are some of the key questions driving this project.

 

Care for Social Futures

This project explores how we might embed care in all facets of formal and informal, digital and material context to create new pathways towards inclusive and just futures in this rapidly ageing, socially precarious, and digitally networked era. We are particularly interested in exploring non-disciplinary-bounding, and co-creative ways of doing research and practice focused on care and wellbeing.

 

Playful Cities: Co-creating Urban Futures

Across the world, there is an increasing impetus for moving from consultative to co-creative models to imagine and create urban futures–for example, designing health care systems, social services, technologies, and spaces in the city. At the same time, playful and playable city movements are emerging as a means to creatively imagine possibilities for making cities more liveable, open, and (more-than-)human. This project explores the question: How might we co-create urban futures through playful engagements?