I am Associate Professor in design anthropology Umeå Institute of Design.
My teaching and research focuses on how designers engage different people and materials to bring about new ways of organizing daily life. Whether it is the daily life and materials of a specialized work profession such as medical equipment for conducting surgery in the hospital setting or the organizatioinal set-up supporting new comers navigate the local language while buying groceries, designers engage a variety of people in order to create new possibilities through design.
I focus on the improvisational and emerging practices in the design encounter. My work draws on traditions of participatory design, the participant observation approach from anthropology, as well performance theory and practices.
Before joining UID full time in 2017, I worked for eight years at Interactive Institute (now RISE) as a senior researcher conducting applied research projects with special focus on exploring new pedagogies for language learning in-the-wild. During the last four years at the institute, I led team of designers and researchers in the Stockholm studio.
Biography
By background lies in the social sciences (BA 1995, San Jose State University, USA), international community development and disaster relief practice in Bolivia (1996-1999), and anthropology (MA 2002 Northern Arizona University, USA). I conducted my PhD in User Centered Design with an emphasis in design anthropology at the University of Southern Denmark (2007) followed by a post-doc (2008-2010).