Activities

This 2-day event is dedicated to doctoral researchers, early-career scholars and practitioners wishing to take part in the Anticipation 2026 PhD Summer School: “Designing within Paradox” – 29-30 June at Politecnico di Milano.

Abstract submission deadline November 28

The summer school offers a unique setting in which participants will combine inspirational talks from invited speakers with hands-on activities and collective reflection. It is designed as a space for in-depth discussion, peer-to-peer exchange, and experimentation around the role of design in reconfiguring governance amidst paradox, institutional unfitness, and ethical dislocation. PhD candidates are invited to submit an abstract of 500–700 words (excluding references). Submissions should include: a brief description of the PhD topic under exploration; the methodology used for the investigation; the expected or emerging results; a clear articulation of how the research connects with the PhD Summer School theme “Designing within Paradox: Reconfiguring Governance in Times of Institutional Unfitness and Ethical Dislocation.” In addition, participants are encouraged to formulate provocations that can open ground for dialogue and debate during the school. These provocations should highlight tensions, questions, or critical perspectives that might enrich collective exploration. The results of the summer school will be shared by participants in a dedicated panel at the conference and may also be collated for future publication opportunities. Further details will be provided directly to selected participants. If submitting your abstract to the PhD Summer School, please make sure to select the appropriate option during submission phase in both topic and format.

The summerschool is organized by Eva Knutz and Thomas Markussen in collaboration with Marzia Mortadi, Victoria Rodriguez Schon and Manuela Celi. 

For info about the summerschool as well as the conference see: https://anticipationconference.net

From being an ideal, it has become imperative to act responsibly in all matters in society. The term ‘responsible design’ has been described as design that ‘responds to the needs of and challenges faced by the society’ (Eggink et al. 2020). Currently, in the sense of urgency, there is an overwhelming set of initiatives, challenges and re-orientations of previous approaches being both arbitrarily and systematically tried out, including but not limited to sustainability, gender issues, ethnic rights, inclusivity, economic marginalisation, reconnecting man and nature, peace movements, CSR and business ethics, climate crisis responses and food and energy scarcity. Despite this overwhelmingly diverse set of initiatives scattered across institutions, we lack a clear conceptual understanding of what ‘responsible design’ is, its implications and how it may be practised.

Welcome to our newly developed “Design Thinking, Research, and Experiments” course. As many academics and professionals within the design field, our relationship to Design Thinking, Design Research, and Design Experiments has evolved through the years. In this course, we will discuss and reflect upon selected concepts

Design education increasingly focus on responsible engagement with a wide array of stakeholders, yet lacks clarity on what to teach and how. We develop new theory of responsible stakeholder engagement in design education, and conduct the first global survey of how design education programs teach for responsible stakeholder engagement.

Danish Design Researchers Joins Forces

The Research Network for Questioning Responsible Danish Design (ResQ Danish Design) is a national collaboration between invited senior design researchers from all university-level research institutions in Denmark.