Temporalities Of More-Than-Human Design,
2026
The University of Edinburgh, UK
Temporalities Of More-Than-Human Design, Larissa Pschetz, Gizem Oktay, Valentina Nisi, Jiwei Zhou, Doris Kosminsky, Keili Koppel, Fiona Bell, Katharina Vones, Marta Ferreira
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This theme track builds on emerging research that foreground time as relational, situated, and plural, while examining how a shift towards more-than-human temporalities could reshape design practices, material engagements, and ethical responsibilities. The track proposes five areas of exploration: a) experimental representations of entangled temporalities; b) material transformations, geological formations, and temporal scales of planetary life; c) accounts on practices of noticing, attuning, and orchestrating more-than-human times; d) designerly ways of negotiating and coordinating rhythms; and e) etico-onto-epistemological reflections on time and design. The contributions engage these areas across contexts such as coastal ecologies, plant systems, and bio-based materials, framing …
Design And The Public Sector: Contemporary Methods And Practice,
2026
Georgetown University, United States
Design And The Public Sector: Contemporary Methods And Practice, Scott Schmidt, Sabine Junginger, Marzia Mortati, Federico Vaz
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The DRS2026 track titled “Design and the Public Sector: Contemporary Methods and Practices” examines the expanding relationship between design and the public sector, situating design as an active process in shaping public services, institutional change, and governance practices. Building on a trajectory established across DRS2022, DRS2024, and now DRS2026, this third Design for Policy and Governance Special Interest Group (PoGoSIG) hosted track reflects a shift from foundational and integrative concerns toward a more systems-based orientation. The following contributions are organised around four central themes: AI and New Technologies, Design and Infrastructure, Hope and Imagination, and Participation in Policymaking. Drawing on …
Design Research During And After Artificial Intelligence,
2026
School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University, United Kingdom
Design Research During And After Artificial Intelligence, Matthew Lee-Smith, Jesse Josua Benjamin, Mafalda Gamboa, Stephan Wensveen
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The shift in design research caused by the escalation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking considerable space in the field. In a mixture of potential and undeniable risks, we looked for a blend of critique and practice, of analysis and foresight. In the set of papers to be published, we see a span of precisely that: reflexive re-orientations in the evaluation of what AI is doing to design, mirrored in current practices; and speculations on the after (en)during AI. In this editorial, we contextualize the research in the world it was produced in, exposing the during that unfolded hand-in-hand with …
Making Theory With Textiles: Theories Of Designing And Designing Theory,
2026
University of Southampton (Winchester School of Art), United Kingdom
Making Theory With Textiles: Theories Of Designing And Designing Theory, Elaine Igoe, Anne Louise Bang
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Textiles have long nurtured philosophical positions and metaphors, inquiries, as well as investigations of making and everyday life aesthetics and processes. Performing ontologically and epistemologically at different scales, textiles are often used as case studies in interdisciplinary research. This track presents a varied selection of papers that take textiles as starting points for critical and theoretical investigations of our world, our modes of production and conditions of living, as well as their intersections. These papers focus on the way that practice, perception, usability and critical inquiry are theorized through the lens of textiles, and the way that textiles inform and …
Play Design Materials: Entangled Matter And Making,
2026
Kolding School of Design. Denmark
Play Design Materials: Entangled Matter And Making, Helle Marie Skovbjerg, Mathias Poulsen, Tuuli Mattelmäki, Sofie Kinch, Hyunjae Daniel Shin, Ricardo Conçalves Dutra, Eun Sun Park, Louise Ravnløkke, Jennifer Ann Skriver
DRS Biennial Conference Series
To design for play is to engage with materials, whether physical, virtual, symbolic, or ephemeral. In design for play we don’t just select materials; we shape and are shaped by them. Yet within design research, we must explore how materials do play, not merely support it. This theme track invites contributions that consider materials not as passive tools, but as active collaborators in a relational field where matter, mood, meaning, affect, and politics entangle. We are interested in how materials act not only as substrates for play, but as collaborators, provocateurs, and agents in the making of play, relationships, and …
Designing Preventive Health Technologies And Practices,
2026
Universidade de Lisboa, ITI/LARSyS, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal
Designing Preventive Health Technologies And Practices, Ayşe Özge Ağça, Teresa Almeida, Armağan Karahanoğlu, Anna Vallgårda
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This track explores how design influences preventive health technologies and practices, considering them as spaces for care, negotiation, and future planning. While preventive health is often examined through medical and technological lenses, design offers a unique perspective by focusing on lived experiences, care relationships, and the processes of making sense of things. In this editorial, we outline five contributions that investigate preventive health across diverse contexts, including behavior change, immersive care technologies, critical perspectives on healthcare systems, health communication, and bio-inspired design frameworks. These findings together show that designing for preventive health goes beyond just predicting or reducing future problems …
Counter Design: Changing Perspectives In Design Action,
2026
ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Counter Design: Changing Perspectives In Design Action, Yekta Bakırlıoğlu, Claudia Garduño García, Nicola Morelli
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design continues to operate through assumptions inherited from its industrial and epistemic origins, yet the contributions gathered here unsettle those defaults and propose alternative orientations for practice. They examine how design problems are framed, how publics are organised, and how designers themselves are produced under specific historical and political conditions. Spanning urban governance, feminist methodologies, grassroots archival infrastructures, digital representation, relational approaches to AI, and critiques of universalised design expertise, the papers illuminate how counter-practices cultivate alternative publics and expand the epistemic boundaries of design. Counter Design appears not as a unified method or approach but as a constellation of …
Design Principles,
2026
Braunschweig University of the Arts
Design Principles, Bianca Kóczán, Bianca Herlo
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The theme track “Design Principles” includes twelve papers that frame design research as a situated and relational practice. Across the papers, design is understood as a way of generating meaning, mediating emotions, negotiating power, and shaping collective learning and action. Through collage, play, activism, empathy, process models, and rural cultural co-creation, the two sessions inquire how design frameworks, methods, and metrics actively produce relations between people, environments, institutions, cultures, and forms of knowledge. Together, the papers challenge neutral or universalising accounts of design, showing how design meaning emerges through language, context, bodies, affect, participation, and lived experience.
Bodies In Design: Rethinking Norms, Materials, Technologies, And Methods,
2026
University of California, Davis, Department of Design
Bodies In Design: Rethinking Norms, Materials, Technologies, And Methods, Gözde Göncü-Berk, Sarah Kettley, Elif Ozden-Yenigun, Theodore Hughes-Riley
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The Bodies in Design track deals with the ways design engages with the human body with an emphasis on critical and creative investigations into the role of the body in contemporary design. While the body remains implicitly central to design thinking, it can be rendered invisible by a focus on the rational user or the cognitively motivated actor, and unreflexively normalized through forms of conservative and market-driven design agendas. Advancements in wearables and soft systems however, are reshaping design as a practice that engages the body in more considered and complex ways. We therefore sought contributions across material domains that …
Design Technologies,
2026
School of Business, University of Portland, United States of America
Design Technologies, Beatriz Itzel Cruz Megchun, Michael Stead
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The theme track, ‘design technologies’, includes eleven papers covering a wide range of approaches to human-AI collaborations, reflections, and resistances in the design realm, process, and outcomes. In this editorial, we identify two broad themes, human-AI design collaborations and critical discourse on AI in design, to unfold the different design stances and intents with regard to AI in praxis and education. We want to ignite a conversation in which we reflect on our stances as designers, while respecting and honouring the poise of other humans, on the AI emerging landscape, and question how each of us uses design-AI exchanges in …
Regenerating The “Sustainability Project”: Transitioning Design And Sustainability Research Into The 21st Century,
2026
Imagination Design Research Lab, Lancaster University, UK
Regenerating The “Sustainability Project”: Transitioning Design And Sustainability Research Into The 21st Century, Michael Stead, David Sánchez Ruano
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design has been a key protagonist in the story of the “Sustainability Project.” Yet, with capitalism, emissions, biodiversity loss and social injustice increasing, it might be argued that ‘the project,’ and design’s role in it, have failed to engender the sustainable transitions the planet and its people urgently require – and indeed deserve. This theme track aims to counter this defeatist narrative. Emphasising the ever-evolving relationship between Design and Sustainability, the track reflexively recognises that although design can often find itself a main driver of environmental unsustainability, it can similarly be harnessed as a critical conduit for positive planetary change. …
Practical Ways Of Staying With The Trouble: Enacting Posthuman Ethics Through Design Practice,
2026
Interactive Technologies Institute, I.S.Técnico, Portugal
Practical Ways Of Staying With The Trouble: Enacting Posthuman Ethics Through Design Practice, Marta Ferreira, Ana Henriques, Angelika Strohmayer, Valentina Nisi
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores how posthuman design researchers operationalise the values inherent to their research as an everyday practice of care, messiness, and partiality. Drawing on five in-depth interviews and employing diffractive analysis through posthuman and feminist care ethics lenses, the study highlights how practitioners enact plural, situated, and reflexive approaches to method. The findings distil theoretical commitments into actionable suggestions and everyday ethics, underscoring the significance of relational accountability in design research. Implications are discussed for legitimising care-centred methods, reframing design research, and supporting systemic change. In foregrounding posthuman approaches and ethics as ongoing attunement, this research offers practical strategies …
From Peril To Perseverance: Dr. Arthur C. Parker And The Seneca Arts Project,
2026
Binghamton University
From Peril To Perseverance: Dr. Arthur C. Parker And The Seneca Arts Project, Brennan Ciccolone
Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal
Like many Native people, the Haudenosaunee were subjected to culturcide and assimilation using residential schools like the Thomas Indian School in the late 19th and early 20th century. During this time, in 1925, the Seneca archaeologist Dr. Arthur C. Parker was hired as the director of the Rochester Museum and Science Center. Parker used his museum position to uplift and preserve Haudenosaunee arts and culture. This paper focuses on his Seneca Arts Project (1935-1941), which gathered art and artifacts from both ancient and contemporary Haudenosaunee members. This project explores how Parker’s work was used to help revitalize and honor Native …
Mic,
2026
Dartmouth College
Reiss Hall,
2026
Dartmouth College
Chiron Return,
2026
Dartmouth College
Et Tu Lily?,
2026
Dartmouth College
The Orion & Running Man Nebulas,
2026
Dartmouth College
The Orion & Running Man Nebulas, Ed Ting
CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal
No abstract provided.
Beach Day,
2026
Dartmouth College
Dolmen,
2026
Dartmouth College
