The Design Research Lab is a network of people, organisations, and non-human agents engaged at the intersection of technologies, materials, and social practices. Our aim is to design socially and ecologically sustainable tools, spaces, and knowledge that support people’s participation in a digital society – based on common principles of inclusiveness and respect for the planet. This puts the basic democratic right to take part in the digital sphere into practice. We start our research from individual lifeworlds and the needs of minoritized groups, beyond consumer majorities.
We are an interdisciplinary team of designers, researchers, tech-enthusiasts and critical thinkers from Berlin University of the Arts, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, as well as Einsteincenter Digital Future (ECDF).
We are joined online on this Thursday, 07.11.2024 at 9:30 a.m. Berlin-time by Carina Lange for a presentation titled “Looking for Freedom – Can Design be a Practice of Decoloniality?” as part of the Virtual Colloquium. Design is deeply embedded in colonial legacies, raising the question: Can it ever truly be a practice of freedom? Carina Lange will explore decolonial design methodologies in this talk, drawing from her research and lived experiences in Togo, West Africa. Through this lens, we will examine how freedom can be reimagined in design and critically question whether breaking free from ingrained biases and colonial structures is possible.
Carina Lange is a researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). With a background in international relations, she has worked extensively on rethinking existing design practices to foster inclusivity and representation. Her doctoral research focuses on restructuring design methods to reflect non-Western perspectives. She builds on experiences from over five years of living and working in Togo and several years of professional experience in the international cooperation system, including roles within the German development cooperation, the United Nations, and the European Union.
Please find below the Zoom link to join, which will be the same for all online sessions this semester:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82954605489?pwd=VP3XBDzVogeuQtLWaXbWEFpm9ObxiQ.1
Meeting-ID: 829 5460 5489
Kenncode: 079532