Digital Commons Network^™

Virtually Real. The Great Kimberley Wilderness And The Construction Of Indigenous Heritage, Martin Porr, Laura Mayer

Talking Heads Seminar Series

Australia’s significant rock art is part of contemporary Aboriginal culture and is of importance to a national and international community with interests in heritage, art, and culture. However, this heritage is often contested and subject to cross-cultural misunderstandings, threatening the preservation of its tangible and intangible components. Over the last decades, cultural tourism has been one of the globally most significant areas of economic development and growth. In Australia, the demand for ‘Aboriginal tourism experiences’ is increasing as well. The Federal Government and State Governments continue to focus on Aboriginal tourism as a strategy for economic development and social improvement. …

Designing With Drafts And Cross-Sections: Reflections On How Representations Of Woven Structure Shape Design Practice, Deanna Gelosi, Laura Devendorf

Textile Intersections Conference Series

The draft, a grid of black and white squares used to specify where a particular warp crosses over or under a weft in woven cloth, is a common representation used to design and describe woven structures. The squares in a draft directly, or with a few modifications, translate to manufacturing instructions, which makes the draft a common representation used in weaving design software. In this paper, we describe how using a different woven structure representation, a cross-section, in a design tool that foregrounds different concerns. Specifically, we describe and reflect on our motivation, design, and initial testing of an interactive …

Soft Shaping: Zonal Elasticity In Layered Woven Textiles, Ihab Jiryis, Arielle Blonder

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Body-shaping garments establish form through mechanical action at the textile-body interface: corsetry through rigid reinforcement and lacing, elastic shapewear through elastomeric recovery. This study shifts attention from how a textile acts on the body to how its form develops and is organised before application to the body. The Zonal Elasticity System (ZES) is a moisture-activated self-forming system based on differing moisture-responsive behaviour within bonded cotton-linen assemblies. Twenty-four specimens across three phases examined how grain orientation, cut topology, constraint geometry, bond routing, pre-stress, and interlayer coupling directed deformation towards a defined waist region. Connected cut units propagated deformation across the field, …

Reya: Reuse Yarn. Product, Process And Practice, Elizabeth Gaston

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Reya: Reuse Yarn is a practice-led research project that investigates scalable methods for reducing pre-consumer waste in commercial knitwear manufacturing. Positioned within a circular manufacturing framework, the study re-evaluates knit as product, process, and practice to generate new insights into sustainable production. The research addresses the environmental and economic impacts of deadstock yarn, particularly low-value synthetic blends that are typically discarded due to limitations in quantity, aesthetics, and material consistency. Drawing on interdisciplinary knowledge from knit and visual colour psychology, the project employs a Knit Thinking methodology, combining tacit material understanding with explicit technical knowledge through iterative, material-led enquiry. The …

Sketching Fast, Sketching Slow: Extending Sketchnoting Practices With E-Textiles, Anna Blumenkranz, Barbro Scholz, Irene Posch, Verena Fuchsberger

Textile Intersections Conference Series

As design researchers, we are often challenged to make sense of qualitative data without losing its nuances and situated character in the process. Sketchnoting is a widely used technique for transforming data into personal and memorable summaries. Typically practised with pen and paper, it involves a combination of drawings and text. However, what often remains underexplored is the formative role of materials in shaping sketchnoting practices, leaving open questions about the kinds of knowledge different materials enable to articulate. This paper explores e-textiles as a medium for sketchnoting, examining how their temporal, materially composite, interactive properties influence processes of data …

Colour Without Extraction: Towards Ethical Pigments, Tonya Meyrick, Jacinta Kay

Textile Intersections Conference Series

This paper investigates how recycled textile waste, reconstituted as particulate pigment, reshapes understandings of material intelligence in textile design, proposing a specifically chromatic account. Through iterative dyeing trials on cellulose substrates conducted within the Perpetual Pigments research initiative, the study examines what occurs when colour is treated as an active participant rather than a controllable output. Drawing on new materialist theory and circular economy frameworks, the paper argues that waste-derived pigments introduce relational dynamics that challenge industrial assumptions of chromatic stability and control. Despite growing interest in bio-colour, recycled pigment systems remain underexamined within design research. This paper responds to …

Beyond Softness: Examining How Vocabulary Marginalises The Material Narrative Of Native British Wool, Zoë Fletcher, Nicci James

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Softness has become the dominant metric through which wool is evaluated in knitwear design. This paper argues that such language privileges fibres associated with Merino and marginalises native British and regional wools with distinct breed-specific qualities. Drawing on practice-based research, material experiments with native British wool yarns, and literature on wool fibre and supply chains, we examine how existing terminology fails to support design engagement with these materials. In response, we propose a five-part framework, Place, People, Process, Properties and Practice, to support a more nuanced wool literacy. Developing richer vocabulary for native British wool is not simply a matter …

Textile Commons Of Care: Intergenerational Mending And Temporalities, Sam Bennett, Gabriele Ferri

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Visible mending is increasingly recognized as both a functional and creative craft practice and a form of material intelligence, where knowledge emerges through tactile engagement. This paper adds an additional layer that visible mending in community, where the act of mending is also visible, functions as a materially grounded practice of ongoing care through which knowledge and learning are distributed across people, textiles, and time. Drawing on a multi‑sited qualitative study, including a nine‑month global mending cohort, a visible mending workshop, and interviews with experienced menders, the paper examines how care aesthetics helps clarify the social and epistemic dimensions of …

Threading The Line: Switchboard Labor, Bodily Knowledge, And The Textile Traditions Of Telephone Operating, Yuhanxiao Ma

Textile Intersections Conference Series

This paper positions telephone switchboard operating as a textile tradition in the full disciplinary sense: a practice organized around embodied skill, the transmission of bodily knowledge through community, and the production of relational connection as material output. Drawing on feminist labor history, textile theory, and Daniela Rosner’s framework of critical fabulation, it argues that the systematic erasure of switchboard labor by electromechanical automation constitutes a form of textile loss: one structurally identical to the suppression of feminized craft work in computing history. The paper then presents the design logic of This Is Vera, Hold Please, a performance installation in development …

Lead (Pb) Contamination In And Around Cerro De Pasco, Peru: Processes, Impacts, Implications, And Future?, Hailey Barnette

Student Research and Creative Activity Expo

A secondary research poster about the effects of lead in the mining town and surrounding area of Cerro de Pasco, Peru.

Written By Hyunjin: K-Pop Fandom And Identity Formation, Sarah Campbell

Student Research and Creative Activity Expo

This project examines the ways in which fashion, media, and symbolism are used to construct fan identity within the K-Pop fandom.

Seeing Through Students’ Eyes: Photo-Elicitation For Research And Program Evaluation In Nursing, Megan P. Williams

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Background: Photo-elicitation invites participants to capture and share photographs representing their lived experiences. It offers a meaningful way to evaluate how nursing students integrate knowledge, skills, and attitudes across cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains of learning. Grounded in visual sociology (Harper, 2002) and expanded through nursing pedagogy (Linz, 2011; Kronk et al., 2015), this approach helps students express ideas and emotions that are difficult to articulate or assess. Prior research indicates that photo-elicitation supports empathy, critical thinking, and self-awareness through learning experiences such as aging (Chonody, 2018), community health (Cooper et al., 2017), and academic challenges (Steenfeldt et al., 2019). …

Gloves On Or Off? A Critical Ethnographic Study Exploring Non-Sterile Glove Use In Hospital Settings, Navisha Weerasinghe, Fiona A. Miller, Lisa Cranley, Quinn Grundy

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a surge in the production and use of plastic single-use medical products, particularly single-use gowns, masks, and gloves. The proliferation of single-use medical products in care work highlights significant tensions between safety, cost, infection prevention and control (IPAC), and environmental concerns. Nurses are critical stakeholders in driving environmental sustainability within health systems as they are uniquely positioned at the intersection of patient care, supply utilization, IPAC, and waste generation. In recent years, ‘gloves-off’ campaigns have been introduced at some hospitals globally and in Ontario to attend to the environmental harms associated with unnecessary glove use. …

It's In Your Dna: A Comprehensive Overview Of Forensic Genetic Genealogy And The Future Of Profiling Methods And Legal Implications, Selah A. Thompson

OneUSF Undergraduate Research Conference

Forensic Genetic Genealogy (FGG) is a relatively modern and transformative technique within the field of forensics that allows for precise scientific identification of suspects or victims through DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) analysis, primarily consisting of analyses of Short Tandem Repeats (STRs) and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) found within samples of DNA. While FGG is quite new within the field, the applications for accurate, scientific-based analysis of crime scenes can help make an unsolvable case something that can be resolved, including some of the most famous cold cases of the past century. Current FGG technology provides incredibly valuable investigative leads, but current …

Prehistoric Indigenous Foodways At A Northwest Florida Shell Midden, Layla M. Alvarado

OneUSF Undergraduate Research Conference

Florida archaeology can give us further understanding of the ecology and environmental changes that occurred in the past and could re-occur in the present. In this thesis, I examine one site left by the indigenous peoples from prehistoric northwest Florida between about 1500 to 500 years ago to try to understand the environmental conditions they lived in and their food waste. The Van Horn Creek shell midden site (8Fr744) is in the Apalachicola River valley region, about 50 miles west of Tallahassee. In my research, I studied cultural materials from Test Unit 1 at the site, which was excavated in …

Women’S Peace Agency: Reading Africae Munus In The Framework Of Emilie Townes’ Womanist Ethics And The Cultural Production Of Evil, Leonard N. Zifac

Graduate Student Research Symposium

This paper employs Emilie M. Townes's womanist ethical framework—particularly her concept of the "cultural production of evil"—to critically examine Pope Benedict XVI's post-synodal exhortation Africae Munus (2011) and its treatment of African women's agency in peacebuilding. While Africae Munus calls the Church in Africa to serve reconciliation, justice, and peace, and acknowledges women's dignity and contributions to family and community life, the document largely confines women's roles to maternal, supportive, and domestic spheres without adequately challenging the patriarchal structures that systematically marginalize women from strategic leadership and formal peace processes. Drawing on Townes's analysis of how cultural narratives, religious discourse, …

Reacting To Electronic Literature In Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, Faith Samuel Bassey

ELO (un)supervised 2026

Electronic literature is still quite new in our country, and we do not have enough manpower to drive a literary or scholarly movement.  We need to introduce these concepts to many people; however, we do not have the people we need who know the field well enough to pass on their passion and prowess to get others enthused about electronic literature.

In this talk, I will describe the ways that I have presented my work, The Water Seller, Mai Ruwa, with Deena Larsen. In October 2025,  I presented this work in an in-person conference in Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra …

Out Of This World: An Exoplanetary Workshop, Monica Storss, Bart Kuipers

ELO (un)supervised 2026

The workshop investigates how scientific constraints can productively defamiliarize human experience and create new frameworks for creativity and expression. Participants will produce original work while considering broader questions about environment, perception, and cultural formation in speculative contexts, and how the arts, sciences, and technology inform each other in relational multiplicities. This generative workshop explores how astronomical data from confirmed exoplanets can generate new poetic forms and linguistic constraints. Participants will examine how exoplanetary conditions can shape language, metaphor, and narrative structure. We'll develop from writing exercises that respond to non-terrestrial physical parameters: alternative light spectra, gravitational variations, and atmospheric compositions. …

Singulars: Performing The Reverse Turing Test, Halim Madi

ELO (un)supervised 2026

Singulars is an ongoing series of performance systems in which I co-create poetry with a language model trained on an anthology of English poetry alongside my own writing. Across three works—carnation.exe, versus.exe, and reinforcement.exe—I stage live reinforcement loops in which my poems and the model’s responses compete for audience votes. The audience functions as an embodied feedback mechanism, shaping the evolution of both the machine and the human poet in real time.

This paper examines what happens when a poet becomes both author and training data. Drawing from creativity research, metacognition, and social cognition, I reflect …

H3) "Between Paths And Beliefs: Religious Tourism As A Tool For Cultural Understanding And Social Transformation", Maria Angelica Alvarez Orozco, Silvia Aulet

International Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Conferences

From the beginning of humanity, walking has been the way humankind has regained its equilibrium, creating a natural connection towards the path and what it represents. Pilgrimage was the first form of tourism to emerge thousands of years ago; in fact, the development of tourism cannot be understood without understanding the practice of pilgrimage since ancient times.

Therefore, this ongoing research, entitled "Between Paths and Beliefs: Religious tourism as a tool for cultural understanding and social transformation," aims to delve into the understanding of pilgrimage as a religious tourism itinerary that contributes to the transformation of individuals through travel. Through …

F1) Walk Of Mutual Repair: Pilgrimage In The Context Of Peirce's Triadic Philosophy, Tadeja Jere Jakulin, Dane Munro

International Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Conferences

Pilgrimage and pilgrim tourism are recognised in reductionist everyday thinking as phenomena that occur in the context of belief or tourism, among other things, and are also researched from this perspective. In our research, we will present pilgrimage as a complex system that requires an in-depth, systemic approach to understanding. In doing so, we will draw on Charles Sanders Peirce's triadic philosophy to present the evolution of the pilgrim, who travelled as a believer and passive participant, to the pilgrim who experiences regeneration and actively cares for sacred spaces. The contribution examines the historical development of pilgrimage studies from Turner's …

An Approach To Sacred Spaces From The Perspective Of The Connection Between Nature And Health, Ricard Fernàndez Molinet, Sílvia Gili Olmeda

International Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Conferences

In a context marked by an increasing search for meaning and well-being, sanctuaries are re-emerging as significant spaces within contemporary spiritual tourism. This work proposes an approach to sanctuaries located in natural environments as liminal spaces, in the anthropological sense developed by Victor Turner, where processes of passage, transformation, and the reconfiguration of personal experience are facilitated. Historically, many sanctuaries have been established in places of strong symbolic and ecological significance, often linked to singular natural elements such as mountains, springs, forests, or caves which have been perceived as sites of connection with the numinous. These spaces have functioned not …

Techwork: Developing And Validating A Reflective Tool For Impact-Aware Design, Sihui Wu, Marirena Kladeftira, Kim Helmersen, Gudela Grote

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Most assessments of technology impact occur only after its deployment, limiting the ability to address unintended social, cultural, and organizational effects. This paper introduces TechWork, a prospective and reflective tool for evaluating emerging technologies within existing work systems. Grounded in reflective practice tradition, socio-technical systems theory, and contemporary work design research, TechWork guides interdisciplinary teams through structured prompts and impact mappings to examine how their own design choices influence autonomy, skills, collaboration, and job demands. The tool was tested through design-education workshops in an architectural studio, applied to vernacular construction practices where embodied expertise and cultural knowledge are central to …

Learning From Inexperienced Users’ Early Engagement With Food Tracking, Isil Oygur, Saadet Tikac Andic

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Current food tracking applications are largely designed to support behaviour change among users who track their food intake to meet predefined goals. As a result, individuals who are curious about food tracking but do not have specific goals remain underserved, limiting the potential of these tools for preventive care. To address this gap, we conducted a three-phase interview study using an existing food journaling application as a probe to reimagine food tracking experiences for inexperienced users. Thirty-one participants used the app for 14 days and discussed their views on healthy eating, food practices, and their tracking experiences. Our analysis identified …

A Researcher And A Guide Talk Into A Paper: A Dialogue On Being Many Things At Once, Ranjani Balasubramanian, Shweta Srivastav

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper argues that the positionality of the practitioner-researcher often remains centered in the self-reflective question “Who am I?”, fixing identity at the core of a relational web. We propose shifting this inquiry toward “Who can I be?” and “Who can I be in relation?”, recognising identity as fluid, contextual, and co-constituted through relationships. The paper unfolds through a conversational method that unpacks the ongoing PhD research of the first author. The authors navigate this landscape of lived research and practice in dialogue with two simultaneously held identities - the Practitioner-Researcher and the Scholar-Provocateur. Drawing from decolonial praxis, we conceptualise …

Value Co-Creation, Co-Displacement, And Co-Destruction In Design: Bridging Value And Values In Human-Data Interaction, Boyeun Lee, Ella Tallyn, Ramprabu Thangaraj, Chris Elsden, Chris Speed

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Data has emerged as a fundamental driver of value creation within design processes, shaping economic, ethical, and environmental outcomes across societies and socio-technical systems. Existing scholarship often frames value in binary terms of co-creation and co-destruction, overlooking the systemic complexities introduced by interconnected, data-intensive systems. This paper introduces the novel concept of value co-displacement to capture how alternative forms of value emerge and displace others within human–data interaction. Drawing on four design research case studies, we investigate how value and values are co-created, co-displaced, and co-destroyed across interconnected, data-intensive systems. We develop a framework that conceptualises the dynamic interplay of …

The Memory Loom: Reweaving Curatorial Power Relations With Source Communities In Virtual Reality Cultural Heritage Exhibitions, Ning Zhao, Ziqiang He, Shijie Ming, Haopeng Yuan, Furui Sun, Ke Jiang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how to redistribute curatorial power in VR heritage exhibitions by designing actionable governance mechanisms. We conceptualize VR heritage exhibitions as political curatorial infrastructures rather than neutral storytelling media. We employ a two-stage RtD framework: first building a baseline VR stage, then embedding two mechanisms: Parallel Weave (narrative authorship) and Asynchronous Governance Lock (publishing/veto rights). With N=32 participants, analysis reveals four tensions: (1) community narratives increased affective engagement and epistemic recognition, yet (2) parallel inclusion also risked narrative segregation; (3) a visible veto established accountable workflows, but (4) this power redistribution also transferred sociopolitical risk onto community representatives, …

Designing Motion Identity: Exploring The Aesthetic Expression Of Brand Style Through System Motion, Xinyi Xie, Yinman Guo, Zican Chen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study investigates how system motion enhances aesthetic experience and shapes users’ interpretation of brand style. Using Windows 11, macOS, and HarmonyOS as representative cases, the study analyses four categories of system animations through a motor-level framework comprising temporal, spatial, and transformational attributes. Twelve motion samples were coded, and participants evaluated each sample using perceptual adjectives. The results show that consistent attribute patterns across functional categories lead to stable aesthetic tendencies, while differences emerge from how each system repeatedly applies these attributes. These attribute biases create distinct perceptual profiles, indicating that motion can function as a subtle medium for expressing …

No One Knew. They Came. Exploring Photo-Elicitation In Societal Development, Jennie Schaeffer, Mira Karlsson, Andreea Strineholm, Erika Andersson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Citizen dialogues strive for inclusivity but often exclude marginalized groups. New participatory and creativity-based approaches are needed to be evaluated and become a part of the skillset repertoire for public officials to foster an inclusive dialogue. This paper reflects on photo-based conversations as a dialogic method for societal development and inclusion. The results show that the method provides possibilities to creatively involve participants, strengthen relationships and open a space for diverse narratives between different actors in society. However, the challenges of internal exclusion, lack of strategies for impact, and the need to build competence in handling conflicting stories, without depoliticizing …

Interiority As A Pedagogical Approach In Interior Design Studio Education, Selin Aktan Abraham, Fulya Özbey

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As the central platform of design education, interior design studios function as dynamic learning environments that advance creativity and sensitivity to the social and spatial dimensions of design. Although the experiential qualities of space are conceptually acknowledged within studio pedagogy, the notion of ‘interiority’ remains unstudied compared to the emphasis placed on technical requirements. This paper positions interiority as a critical yet underexplored component of interior design pedagogy. Through a literature mapping and thematic synthesis, this paper defines five core dimensions of interiority as (1) spatial, (2) sensory, (3) affective, (4) identity-related, and (5) temporal, then correlates these dimensions in …