Ex auditorio questions: the chair of the defence will invite the attending audience at Kristen Nygaards sal to ask ex auditorio questions.
Trial lecture
“Designing for Sustainability: Theoretical Foundations and Pedagogical Implications”
Time and place: March 28, 2025 11:15 AM. Kristen Nygaards sal (5370), Ole-Johan Dahls hus.
Main research findings
This thesis adopts a Research through Design (RtD) approach to explore opportunities at the intersection of design, technology, and societal transitions. Three key research interests guided explorations. The first investigates how such a design process can contribute to the regenerative production of digital artefacts, which aims to reduce negative impacts but also promote processes that restore ecosystems and create equitable benefits for people, other species, and the environment. This manufacturing entry point allows foundational critiques and iterative, hands-on regenerative material explorations of decomposition and mineral accretion and challenges the concept of externalities. The second inquiry relates to identifying design processes contributing to regenerative practices and outcomes. The last one looks at ways to leveraging these findings. Such aims involve thinking beyond traditional mass production methods and adopting strategies that support empowerment, democratization, and active citizenship through ‘scaling deep’ approaches.
The contributions of the thesis, in the spirit of the chosen RtD approach, remain close to design practice, with some level of abstraction gained through reflection.
An argument is provided for leveraging education as a location where design can explore other arrangements and collaborations outside of typical transactional relationships to develop new skills needed to address the multiple challenges we face.
Adjudication committee
- Professor Pawel W. Woźniak, TU Wien, Austria
- Associate Professor Jonas Fritsch, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
- Associate Professor Alexander Moltubakk Kempton, University of Oslo, Norway
Supervisors
-
Professor Alma Leora Culén, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
-
Associate Professor Yangyang Zhao, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
-
Associate Professor Suhas Govind Joshi, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
-
Professor William Wirt Gaver, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
Chair of defence
- Professor Emeritus Jens Johan Kaasbøll, University of Oslo, Norway
Contact information at Department: Mozhdeh Sheibani Harat