Patterns Of Everyday Care: Translating Cultural Practices For Online Communities, Austin Toombs, Seora Park, Tilar Manion, Xinyun Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design research in social computing has used the concept of care to describe how technologies help or hinder interpersonal support online. Yet opportunities remain to explore how the subtle, everyday forms of care that have long sustained communities can inform social technology design. Addressing this, we present a collection of design patterns that translate culturally specific, everyday social practices like passeggiata (Italian social stroll) and sobremesa (Spanish post-meal lingering) into design prompts for digital platforms. Our collection has five pattern families: Shared Habits and Routines, Atmospheric Qualities, Collective Identities, Facilitation Roles, and Boundary Practices. The patterns map these families to …

Design For Mending The Rift: Rethinking Sustainable Design From An Eco-Marxist Perspective, Yan Yang, Zhaoyu Wang, Jia Ren, Tie Ji, Han Meng

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Despite the advancement of sustainable design, a critical paradox persists: many practices remain embedded in industrial paradigms, failing to address deep-seated socio-natural contradictions. Grounded in the Eco-Marxist "metabolic rift" framework and informed by recent Agricultural Innovation Design (AID) research, this study proposes a key path for mending these rifts. The research offers a systemic framework for intervening in complex social-ecological systems. The primary conclusions are: (1) metabolic rifts are fundamentally rooted in relational alienation, characterized by the disruption of healthy and reciprocal metabolic relationships between society and nature; (2) structural sustainability requires reshaping metabolic relationships across social, ecological, and intergenerational …

Co-Designing Culture: A Grounded Theory Of Participatory Practice In Indian Folk Music, Abhinav Agrawal, Mudit Chaturvedi, Gaurang Agrawal

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Prevailing accounts of co-design remain anchored in Western formal practice. This study repositions Indian folk music as a culturally embedded site of collaborative design. Drawing on Murphy’s anthropology of design and a grounded theory approach, we analysed 1,621 coded segments from interviews with 23 first-generation folk artists across 14 Indian states. We show that musicians function as cultural designers who translate lived experience and shared moral economies into adaptive musical forms through participatory routines: community observation, collective ideation, performance-based prototyping, and iterative calibration through audience feedback. We formalise these dynamics in the Cultural Co-Design Flow model, illuminating how layered semantics, …

Does Taboo Constrain Self-Knowledge?: A Design-Led Inquiry Into The Intimate Health Of Older Women, Renata Rocha, Ayşe Özge Ağça, Teresa Almeida

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Intimate health deals with highly personal functions and experiences related to sexuality, reproduction, and vulnerability. In this paper, we enquire into the private nature and sociocultural constructs of these experiences in relation to self-knowledge. We introduce a design workshop with three women aged 65+ in Portugal, where we investigated intimate care practices throughout the lifecourse. Our findings show that participatory methods can open dialogue and reveal tacit knowledge, and that lifelong learning is critical for healthy ageing. We reflect on our practice in relation to design considerations for designing with taboo and offer future directions for designing for and with …

Hybrid Craft Practices For Sustainable Materialities And Narratives Through Digital Fabrication, Alessia Romani, Philip Gurrey, Imogen Clendinning, Junyu Ke, Joshua Pearce

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Hybrid craft can help envision more sustainable futures, recognizing the human-nature-technology interdependence in ecological making practices. Beyond industrial and research applications, digital fabrication offers new aesthetic and formal possibilities to designers, artists, and practitioners, exploring new materialities and narratives to foster sustainable discourses through hybrid craft and reflective making. This paper explores how hybrid craft and digital fabrication can foster sustainable materialities and narratives to reflect on human-nature-technology relationships and advance sustainability discourses through Janus, a collaborative case study combining local natural elements with 3D printing and crafts. By showcasing a corn stalk alongside its 3D scanned and 3D printed …

Mapping The Opportunity For Circularity In Fashion Retail Design And Fit-Out, Bethan Alexander, Rosemary Varley

DRS Biennial Conference Series

While the fashion industry has accepted, conceptually at least, the benefits of circularity in the context of products and supply chains, little has been written about circularity within the wider context of fashion store design and fit-out. Yet, these aspects of planning and operating retail outlets are central to an industry sector which significantly contributes to local and global economies. This paper comprises an integrated review of academic and industry literature to form themes for future research development. The review revealed four key knowledge gaps: a paucity of data to understand how circularity is implemented in fashion retail design practice; …

From Conflict To Care: A Design Learning Experiment On Food Justice In Rio De Janeiro, Laura Cipriani, Claudio Magalhães, Stefano Maffei

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper discusses the Design for Peace Ecosystem: Urban Conflict and Food Justice course as a situated experiment in transformative design education. Conducted in Rio de Janeiro, the course combined participatory mapping, desk research, and fieldwork to explore how design can reveal and reframe tensions and hidden structural injustices within urban Food Systems. Students first developed urban food conflict maps to visualise inequalities in access, labour, and cultural recognition. Through desk research, they identified local “food care” initiatives that address food conflicts and promote the right to an adequate food culture. Using ethnographic diaries and ethnography techniques, they engaged with …

Designing With Country: Relational Infrastructuring Beyond Technocratic Urbanism, Kimberley Harding, Jennifer Seevinck, Marcus Foth

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The design of both physical and digital layers of the built environment is increasingly shaped by the pursuit of “smartness,” often privileging efficiency and control over the cultural, ecological, and ethical dimensions that sustain life in cities. Resisting this technocratic urbanism and reimagining infrastructuring through Australian Aboriginal principles of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) – including relationality, responsibility, and reciprocity – offers ethical and sustainable directions for design. This paper proposes relational infrastructuring as a situated design practice that enacts and sustains cultural and ecological relations rather than merely delivering technical functions. Drawing on design scholarship, Indigenous knowledges, and urban studies, …

Co-Creating Connections: How Design, Healthcare, And Museum Actors Experience A Co-Creation Process, Margo Annemans, Iulia Vescan, Frederik Vandyck, Grietje D'Hollander, Maarten Van Acker, Inge Glazemakers

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In recent years, co-creation has become common in design and healthcare contexts. This paper examines a co-creation process aimed at creating a physical link between a museum park and a child and adolescent psychiatric hospital. Whereas the experiences of end-users are key in co-creation processes, only few studies analyse how research and design actors experience partaking in such process. Therefore, we aim to unravel how a co-creation process is perceived by the various actors involved to ultimately foster improved understanding and collaboration and formulate recommendations for future projects. Through a focused collective autoethnographic approach, we explore the experiences of all …

Design Activism Pedagogy: Learning And Negotiating Values In Practice, Gheysa Caroline Prado

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how design education can reveal and negotiate values through the practice of design activism. Based on a multi-year teaching experience with undergraduate design students, the study reflects on how pedagogical strategies oriented by emancipation and collective responsibility enable the articulation of ethical awareness in design processes. The teaching approach evolved from remote reflection-based activities to embodied, field-based interventions that addressed social and environmental issues in local communities. Through qualitative analysis of classroom documentation and student projects, the study identifies values such as reciprocity, dignity, and solidarity as emerging drivers of learning and design action. The discussion highlights …

City Of Longevity: A Framework To Integrate Emerging Technologies And Participatory Design Into Urban Environments, Camilla Borghi, Beatrice Ferrarini, Valeria Leonardi, Xueying Xiong

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The City of Longevity (CoL) framework integrates emerging technologies, participatory methodologies, and systemic service design to mainstream longevity in urban planning. Anchored in equity and intergenerational engagement, CoL introduces an AI-driven decision-support platform that translates longevity evidence into actionable urban policy through participatory co-design, KPI setting, and systemic service design principles. Following the Longevity as a Service (LaaS) concept, CoL advances a phased, coordinated implementation architecture whose deliverables are tailored to each municipality's cultural heritage and civic identity. This architecture is embedded within a collaborative inter-city network. Methodologically, this work synthesises convergent evidence from exposome science, longevity-ready urbanism, participatory design, …

Reflective Sociomaterialist Learning For Design For Sustainability (Dfs) In The Global South: Evaluations Of Students’ Product Service System (Pss) Design Projects At A Thai Design School, Hyunwook Hwangbo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how teaching service design through Product-Service System projects can encourage reflective sociomaterialist learning for Design for Sustainability in the Global South. It analyses 22 Product-Service Systems projects by undergraduate students at a Thai design school to examine how design education, aligned with Thailand’s bio-circular-green (BCG) economy initiative, helps develop students as social agents who drive sustainable innovation. Using ethnographic action research and thematic analysis, six case vignettes illustrate how participatory design methods and systems thinking in Product-Service Systems projects empower students to build sociotechnical systems and offer localized, community-centered solutions. Findings show that integrating Product-Service Systems practices …

More-Than-Human Design In The Real World: Resistance, Regeneration, And Radical Solidarity, Cristina Zaga, Iohanna Nicenboim, Elisa Giaccardi, Joseph Lindley, Arne Berger, Claudia Garduño García, Laura Forlano

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In Capitalocene, humanity faces the intertwined crises of technological advancement and ecological collapse. These urgent challenges require us to question the power structures embedded in design, technology, and society. As a response, More-than-human design (MthD) recognizes the agency, sentience, and mutual influence of nonhuman species, materials, and environments, foregrounding principles of care, reciprocity, and collaborative co-shaping to foster multispecies cohabitation, ecological justice, and planetary well-being. Yet, it remains unclear how MthD can move beyond academia to influence policy, industry, and communities for ecological and social regeneration. Practicing MthD in the real world means proposing different ways of knowing and ways …

Roe V. Wade With Audre And Nikki: Their Social And Political Impacts Following The Landmark Decision, Sharon L. Eaddy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes how the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade shaped public understandings of reproductive rights and how those understandings diverged across race, gender, class, and sexuality. Using a qualitative, interdisciplinary design, the study pairs close textual analysis of Nikki Giovanni’s and Audre Lorde’s poems and essays with socio-legal and historical context on constitutional privacy doctrine, the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the Reconstruction legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The central research question is: what kinds of reproductive “freedom” become legible through Roe’s rights-based framing, and what forms of constraint remain visible when Black …

We Buried The Curriculum And Called It Holy, Charles E. Becknell Jr., Johnna Rocker-Clinton

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This track develops the concept of apocalyptic pedagogy by situating it within Africana studies and classroom rituals, illustrating how curriculum itself can be examined, buried, and reimagined through practices rooted in Black educology. Drawing on ancestral knowledge and collective memory, the track envisions ritual as curriculum, where libation and remembrance become practices of mourning and reclamation. Rather than centering institutional reform, the track frames education as a ritual circle enacting pedagogy as remembrance, mourning, and rebirth, honoring Black life as sacred.

The Church As Provider Of Pastoral Care: Relational Presence, Narrative Listening, Preaching, And Advocacy In African American Missionary Baptist Churches In Southside Fort Worth, Texas, Michael R. Timberlake

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Abstract

Michael R. Timberlake, Sr.

May 1, 2026

THE CHURCH AS PROVIDER OF PASTORAL CARE: RELATIONAL PRESENCE, NARRATIVE LISTENING, PREACHING, AND ADVOCACY IN AFRICAN AMERICAN MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCHES IN SOUTHSIDE FORT WORTH, TEXAS

The purpose of this research project is to restore and maintain the resiliency in the African American Missionary Baptist churches in the Southside of Fort Worth, Texas. The research identified a high level of importance for African American churches in Fort Worth to resemble the historic legacy of spiritual leadership, communal care, and social advocacy while ministering within contexts marked by racial and economic marginalization. Enabling practical …

(The) Invisible Threads: Portraiture, Memory, And Relational Endurance, Behnaz Ghasempour

Masters Theses, 2020-current

(The) Invisible Threads is an MFA thesis investigating how invisible interpersonal bonds, collective traces, and communal endurance can be made perceptible through drawing, material, and immersive installation. Drawing from my lived experience as an Iranian woman who has witnessed everyday constraint, collective uprising, and migration, the project asks how the presence of others continues to inhabit the body and shape identity even in conditions of separation and distance. Large-scale self-portraits, layered with other faces on transparent fabrics, copper plates, and stitched threads, position the artist’s own body as a site where personal and collective histories converge, allowing the self to …

Care As Method: Sound, Duration, Relation In Contemporary Art Practice, Violet L. White

MFA in Visual Art

Abstract Care as Method: Sound, Duration, and Multispecies Relation in Contemporary Art Practice

This thesis proposes care as a method of artmaking, not a subject, theme, or aesthetic position, but the actual structural logic through which a body of work is built, sustained, and understood. Working at the intersection of ecological art practice and relational aesthetics, it asks what happens when the encounter at the center of the work is not between two people but between species, infrastructures, and histories of use and what obligations that encounter generates.

The argument is developed through six interconnected works: installations, sound compositions, sculptures, …

Local And Indigenous Knowledge, Innovation, And Sustainable Development: Creating Sustainable Futures Amidst Crisis Conditions At The Community Level, Carlos Andrés Arias

Dissertations and Theses

In 1987, the Brundtland Commission's Our Common Future (1987) made clear the need to reject longstanding development processes and focus on sustainable development. The Commission stressed that actual sustainable development integrates three elements: social development, economic development, and environmental protection. Though developed nations have achieved economic growth through conventional and extractive development practices, these practices have intensified natural disasters driven by climate change, increased food insecurity, and deepened poverty. This has acutely impacted Indigenous and local communities, many of whom face crisis conditions, such as war, terrorism, civil disorder, and their aftermath. Even so, many of these communities successfully implement …

Interweaving Cairo's Urban Fabric: The Formal, The Informal And The Contemporary, Hagar Ahmed

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture is a negotiation between memory and change, preservation and erasure. In Cairo, a city layered with history, rapid development threatens historic areas and informal settlements (AlSayyad, 2011). While monumental heritage preservation is institutionalized, informal urban fabrics are often excluded from heritage discussions and planning. This research explores Mansheyet Nasser, or Garbage City, an informal settlement between Islamic Cairo and the Mokattam plateau. Over the past fifty years, Zabbaleen residents have built a communal waste collection and recycling system that processes up to 80% of materials, outperforming many regulated cities (Fahmi and Sutton, 2010; Didero, 2011). This infrastructure is both …

Resilience In Recreation: Stories Of A Changing Climate, Casey L. Auberle

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

As the impacts of climate change become increasingly prevalent, the outdoor activities that bond us to our local communities and environments are under threat. In Missoula, MT, drought, rising temperatures, and wildfire smoke change what it means to fish, ski, run, and recreate in our town. In a series of Q&A style podcasts, environmental philosophy graduate student Casey Auberle creates a platform to share stories of a changing climate through the lens of local recreators and climate activists. Capturing these voices invites us to consider our relationship with nature on both an individual and communal scale, to find unity in …

Joy Beyond Circumstance: Crafting A Picture Book That Challenges Western Perceptions Of Joy, Sarah L. Stockett

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the creation of a children’s picture book as a method of challenging Western perceptions of happiness, particularly the assumption that material abundance determines joy. Drawing from two service-based experiences with Zoe Ministries in Kitale, Kenya, the project centers on The Glad Rag, a picture book in which a single piece of fabric travels through many hands and becomes many useful items. Through this narrative, the book invites young readers to consider resourcefulness, gratitude, and joy that transcends circumstance.

The project uses a mixed-methods research approach. Primary data were gathered through participant observation and informal conversations on …

Harness The Darkness! Blackout Poetry And Drama Therapy For Systemic Existential Dread: A Proposed Methodology, Kerry Sullivan

Expressive Therapies Theses

This thesis explores the intersection of drama therapy and blackout poetry as a therapeutic intervention to address systemic existential dread (SED) among emerging adults. The proposed methodology is titled "Bringing Blackout Poetry to Life" and consists of five sessions designed to explore the participants’ SED and generate poetry, culminating in a public performance. By integrating elements from psychodrama and drama therapy with the therapeutic process of blackout poetry, the intervention intends to aid processing on all levels of the expressive therapies continuum (ETC), strengthen tolerance for uncertainty, and facilitate sustainable community action. This theoretical framework is supported by a wide-ranging …

Transforming Theory Into Action: Feminist Frameworks In Reproductive Justice Organizing, Ella R. Mitchell

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This honors thesis examines how feminist theoretical frameworks can be translated into practical strategies for reproductive justice organizing. Grounded in a reproductive justice framework and drawing on three key feminist frameworks, intersectional feminism, queer feminist theory, and feminist ethics of care, this paper explores how each provides critical tools for understanding and responding to reproductive oppression. Intersectional feminism illuminates how overlapping systems of inequality structure reproductive experiences and political marginalization. Queer feminist theory challenges heteronormative assumptions about family, gender, and reproduction, expanding reproductive justice discourse to include LGBTQ+ communities and diverse forms of kinship. Feminist ethics of care emphasizes relational …

Heirlooms Of Virtu, Santos Nunez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Heirlooms of Virtu explores familial history as a mode of self-study. By examining childhood, the more possible it can be to navigate the contemporary. Research into the self becomes the bridge between two states of being, allowing for a better understanding and a more purposeful approach to the future.

As an artist working primarily in photography and video, I am recontextualizing key nostalgic concepts with technology through interactive sculptures and video installations. My research alludes to classic toys and technologies specific to my childhood in an effort to find and understand the self. Nostalgia as an idea not only exists …

Restorative Justice In Cache Valley: Building Community Resilience Through Restorative Practices, Rivkah Haubner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Restorative justice as a field of study is primarily applied to criminal justice proceedings or similar topics. As such, its use as a tool in political organizing is an underdeveloped field. Due to its Indigenous history, restorative justice has intrinsically ant-colonial, anti-imperial, and anti-racist roots and is therefore already situated within the ethos of many progressive movements. Historically, radical movements within the United States and across the world experienced both internal and external pressures that undermined their goals. Restorative justice offers a framework through which to understand political action as a whole and specific tools to address internal conflict within …

Exploring Gender As An Analytical Framework In The 2018-2019 Revolution And Ongoing Civil War: The Role Of Gendered Violence And Sudanese Women's Resistance, Ami John

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper will interrogate the intersection of gender, war, and political upheaval within Sudan while focusing on the role of women in both the 2019 resistance and the ongoing conflict and revolution. By the end of 2018, mass protests had called for the ousting of Omar al-Bashir, the long-standing Sudanese president. This event set off a chain reaction which led to events that fueled the long-standing rivalry between the two militant groups that were active in Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). The tension caused by this rivalry created unforeseen circumstances for the local …

Radio As War: An Exploration Of Kalamazoo Black Radio In The Vietnam War Era, Amelia Koch

Honors Theses

Kalamazoo, Michigan’s black history runs deep. This thesis aims to trace that black history, and situate it within the realm of black radio as a cultural phenomenon. Rising to its provenance in the mid-1960s, black radio has been, and continues to be, a rallying point for African American communities across the U.S., particularly in Chicago and Detroit. Kalamazoo, a halfway point between these two major cities, has a lack of such stations. Exploring the lack of black radio in Kalamazoo during the 1950s through 70s, this work presents a connection between the existence of black programming and the experience of …

Land Epistemic Ethic: Exploring The Complex Intersection Of Human Bodies, Land, And Identity In Middle Belt Nigeria Cosmologies, Fwangmun Oscar Danladi

International Journal on Responsibility

The Indigenous cosmologies of Nigeria’s Middle Belt emphasize the relationship between human bodies and the land, transcending Western epistemological binaries and revealing profound socio-religious insights into environmental responsibility. Practices such as the burial of newborns’ umbilical cords, often dismissed as animistic or fetishistic, embody a sacred connection to the land that emphasizes belonging rather than ownership. Using an autoethnographic approach, this study critically examines these cosmologies and identifies how the sacredness of land can serve as a repository of communal memory and potential. By reframing land not as a possession but as a relational entity, this research challenges dominant narratives …

The Middle-Class Rip-Off'? Subsiding Culture In Contemporary Ireland, Connell Vaughan Dr

Irish Communication Review

In the last few years (roughly since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic) there has been a noted increase in state-led cultural funding in Ireland. Key examples include the raise in the financial allocation to the Arts Council, the introduction of the Basic Income for the Arts scheme, and increased sports capital funding. With reference to the official communication documents of these cases (so-called ‘grey literature’) and deploying the classic 1982 episode of the British sitcom Yes, Minister, ‘The Middle-Class Rip-Off,’ which pitches sports funding against support for the arts, as a satirical lens, this paper reflects on the contemporary …