The University of Johannesburg (UJ) is currently leading the 4.0 conversation in Africa. One of the ways in which UJ brings 4.0 and the implications it has for society into public discourse is through UJ Cloudebates™. They are “designed to bring together experts from: business, academic faculties, legal practice, the arts and technology together to engage in thought provoking and insightful discussion about how our world is changing and what part we all have to play in this future.” The debates were initiated last year and take a 4.0 topic and unpack it for virtual audiences through experts who participate in the discussion. I am honoured to have been formally invited to be one of the experts for the next theme – “Obsolete or absolute? The Academic Thesis in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” The Cloudebate™ will take place on Wednesday, 10 April 2019 from 18:00 – 19:00 and you will … Read More
LeNS World Distributed Conference Keynote
I am honoured to have been invited as the South African keynote for the first LeNS World Distributed Conference: Designing Sustainability for All. It takes place from the 3-5th April 2019 simultaneously in Mexico City, Mexico; Curitiba, Brazil; Cape Town, South Africa; Milan, Italy; Bangalore, India and Beijing, China. The conference is organised as part of the LeNSin, the International Learning Network of networks on Sustainability project (2015-2019), which is supported by EU Erasmus+ programme. From the conference’s website, the organisers explain that “Designing sustainability for All envisions a cosmopolitan approach by collecting and sharing contributions from and for all of the contexts: low, middle and high-income ones, from north, south, west and east of the world. Designing sustainability for All is a call for contributions and actions to the whole world design community, i.e. design researchers, design educators and design practitioners.” My keynote will focus on exploring my own … Read More
Educating Citizen Designers In South Africa
Another book in which I have a co-authored a chapter, this time with Ivan Leroy Brown, has just been released! The chapter, no. 5 in the book, explores “A Potential Difference Model for Educating Critical Citizen Designers: The Case Study of the Beegin Appropriate Technology Beekeeping System” (pp. 89-108) and features Ivan’s incredible Beegin beehive. “Educating Citizen Designers in South Africa is the first book of its kind to appear in postapartheid South Africa and it is therefore both overdue and extremely welcome. The book aims at sharing critical citizenship design teaching and learning pedagogies by including contributions from a range of design educators, and one student, who work in different design disciplines, such as architecture, graphic and product design. Critical citizenship education is explicated in relation to a range of theories and new and existing models. Numerous contemporary case studies and examples of design projects from a range of South African Higher … Read More
Public Interest Design Education Guidebook
A book chapter I co-authored with Naude Malan on iZindaba Zokudla: Conversations About Food has just been published by Routledge, UK! “Public Interest Design Education Guidebook: Curricula, Strategies, and SEED Academic Case Studies presents the pedagogical framework and collective curriculum necessary to teach public interest designers. The second book in Routledge’s Public Interest Design Guidebook series, the editors and contributors feature a range of learning competencies supported by distinct teaching strategies where educational and community-originated goals unite. Written in a guidebook format that includes projects from across design disciplines, this book describes the learning deemed most critical to pursuing an inclusive, informed design practice that meets the diverse needs of both students and community partners.” Our chapter explores a collaborative service-learning project undertaken between the University of Johannesburg Departments of Industrial Design and Development Studies in 2014. Department of Industrial Design, University of Johannesburg alumni Natalia Tofas‘s evaporative cooler and Jomari Budricks‘s seedling growing system both feature in the … Read More
Design Authority – Radio Today Interview
I was interviewed by Dave Nemeth on the Design Authority show on Radio Today Johannesburg on Wednesday the 30th of May 2018 between 18:00-18:30. The interview covered how I ended up in Industrial Design, what Industrial Design is, and what opportunities exist for Industrial Designers in South Africa. You can listen to the podcast here:
DEFSA Practice-Based Design Research Workshop
I will be facilitating and speaking at a professional workshop on Practice-Based Design Research on the 8th of June 2018 at the National Research Foundation in Pretoria for The Design Education Forum of Southern Africa – DEFSA If you are interested in attending please RSVP as soon as possible at this link: http://www.defsa.co.za/workshop