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Design Anthropology

Funded by the FWF Austrian Science Fund
Grant DOI 10.55776/PAT4411223

DesignAnthropology

Cold War Industrial Design & Development

Research Project

Over the last decade, contemporary global corporations and humanitarian non-profits alike have embraced a mode of practice termed design anthropology. An amalgamation of ethnographic and behavioural research combined with design strategy, this user-based method has taken up a central role in neo-liberal economies, bringing together disparate stakeholders under the auspices of social innovation and entrepreneurship. Yet as these strategists keenly expand their enterprises deep into the indigenous communities of so-called developing economies, the question of asymmetric power relations and cultural ownership arises. Despite its seemingly progressive, user-centred approach, as a potent amalgamation of social science, design and data strategy, design anthropology is emerging as an unaccountable force behind global economic, social and political policy-making. This project is the first to critically assess this phenomenon, by exploring aspects of its origins in the controversial Cold War development policies applied to post-war decolonising nations, and the implications of its application in present-day contexts. Led and conceived by Professor Alison J. Clarke, it brings together critical contemporary and historical analysis in the context of original archival research and material culture studies.

Team

Alison J. Clarke, Principal Investigator

Univ. Prof. Dr. Alison J. Clarke is Principal Investigator of the FWF Project Design Anthropology: Cold War Industrial Design and Development, Chair of Design History and Theory and Director of the Papanek Foundation, University of Applied Arts Vienna. As an academic working across social anthropology (PhD, University College London) and design history (MA Distinction, Royal College of Art, UK), her research critically explores the contemporary and historical intersections of design, material culture and anthropology. Clarke’s research has been supported by grants from international bodies including: the Graham Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, Botstiber Institution, Austrian Science Fund and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Previously Principal Investigator for the FWF project Victor J. Papanek: Émigré Networks and the Founding of Social Design, she publishes, lectures, curates and broadcasts internationally in the areas of design history and anthropology and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute.

As Principal Investigator, Clarke focuses on how industrial design stood at the forefront of the negotiation and materialization of transnational legacies of decolonisation and modernisation; and design's crucial agency as the principal driver of development policy in the twentieth century. Her research examines ways in which, from the mid-1950s through to the late 1970s, social science uniquely cojoined with design, transforming design from a practice dominated by industrial rationalism to one with an overt social and political agenda applied to decolonising nations of the Global South. Based on extensive original archival research, it questions how we might understand the legacies of technological schemes enacted under the rubric of humanitarianism and development.

Heng Zhi, Post-Doctoral Researcher

Dr. Heng Zhi is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Design History and Theory, University for Applied Arts Vienna and a FWF Post-Doc Researcher on the research project Design Anthropology: Industrial Design and Development. She has previously served as a Curator of the Collection at Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, an Assistant Professor in the Manual and Material Culture Programme, New Design University, St. Pölten, and a lecturer in the Design and Context Programme at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Having conducted extensive field research on China's design policy and the culture of copy in her doctoral research, Heng's current research focus lies in the evolving role design plays in underpinning development policies in the Global South, focusing on the cooperation and power relations between China and Africa in the field of design and digital innovation. Her research contribution to the project focuses on the modes of creative design with which China asserts its soft power in the Global South, and how these approaches are negotiated in the African local context. It considers both state-sanctioned projects following a Western modernist approach, and collaborations inspired by the Shenzhen open-innovation model. By investigating South-South perspectives of design innovation such as the "designed in Africa, made in China" approach, this project offers insights into the networks, mechanisms, and politics of design beyond the Western-dominated narrative.

Ufaq Inaam, Post-Doctoral Researcher

Ufaq Inaam is a FWF post-doctoral researcher and senior scientist in the department of Design History and Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she teaches design theory and critical thinking. Ufaq has been awarded a number of prestigious European research awards including most recently an Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) grant for her research 'Cold War Design, Imitation & Legacy: Development Policies and Soft Power Dynamism in Postcolonial Pakistan’, which also forms the focus of her contribution in the FWF Design Anthropology project. She has presented her research at various platforms and institutions across Austria, Germany, Italy, France, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Canada, and Pakistan.

Her research interests include decolonization, design futures, design education, social impact of design, design and health, development policies, unwritten histories of design and inclusive design for social justice.

International Advisory Board

Prof. Er Alpay, Özyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey
Dr. Adam Drazin, University College London, United Kingdom
Prof. Tanishka Kachru, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India
Prof. Claudia Mareis, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

Events

Symposium

Design and Development:
Histories, Legacies and Futures

Test station for solar products by a Shenzhen manufacturer for off-grid users in rural Africa © Heng Zhi 2026

June 9 2026 | Online Event
Organised by Heng Zhi with Alison J Clarke

Design and architecture assumed a critical role in shaping global development policies during the Cold War, responding to competing political ideologies and rapid technological change. Today, amid intensifying geopolitical tensions and profound transformation driven by digitalisation and AI, design once again occupies a central position in the reconfiguration of global development agendas. Set against post-colonial legacies and the rise of South–South networks, both historical and contemporary practices of “design for development” call for more pluralistic debate around diverse power relations and forms of agency.

Challenging reductive frameworks such as universal modernism, neocolonial narratives, and centre-periphery binaries, this symposium examines the networks, platforms, and assemblages shaped, negotiated, and contested by the local and transnational actors involved in designing, constructing, manufacturing, trading, and consumption. What are the enduring legacies of traditional development models? What new dynamics, infrastructures, and power structures are emerging beyond Eurocentric analytical frames? How do designers, users, communities, and institutions contribute to the reconfiguration of global and social hierarchies?

Bringing together leading international researchers in design history, media and cultural studies, fashion studies, and architectural theory, this event explores diverse ways of understanding design’s role in global development politics across the multi-layered conditions of post-colonial worlds. Speakers include: Miao Lu Lingnan University, Hong Kong; Tommy Tse, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands; Innocent (Ib) Batsani-Ncube, Queen Mary University of London, UK; Alpay Er, Özyegin University Istanbul, Turkey; Vishal Khandelwal, Harvard University, USA; Bahar Emgin, Izmir University of Technology, Turkey; Danielle Charlap, Wolfsonian–Florida International University, USA; Tanishka Kachru, National Institute of Design, India.

Programme to follow | Registration open by 17.03.2026

Papanek Symposium 2026

Fielding Design: Reshaping Future Pasts

© Quicksand

8-9 October 2026 | Online Event
Organisers Alison J Clarke, Tanishka Kachru, Babitha George, Shemal Pandya & Heng Zhi

The Papanek Symposium 2026, a collaboration between the Papanek Foundation, University of Applied Arts Vienna, the National Institute of Design (NID) and Quicksand Design consultancy, India, explores the practical, theoretical and social implications of contemporary design ‘in the field’; highlighting the imperative, and challenge, of shaping design and social policies from the ground-up. As international hybrid event, it comprises online expert presentations and panel discussions with onsite workshops, offering a unique insight into the legacies of past development agendas and the futures for design in shaping worlds and tackling social inequalities.

Bringing together designers, design strategists, social innovators and key thinkers from across India, the Papanek Symposium 2026, addresses vital contemporary questions of the discipline: What are the implications of design’s dispersed role as a mode of applied social science and the legacy of design and development models? How, if at all, are the forays design strategists make into indigenous design cultures mutually beneficial? How are the asymmetrical power relations of corporate, NGO and small-scale social initiatives played out in practice? The event is aimed at design experts, students, social innovators, social scientists, anthropologists and ethnographers, strategists and policy makers and is open to diverse global audience.

This event is supported by the FWF Austrian Science Fund: Design Anthropology: Cold War Industrial Design & Development DOI 10.55776/PAT4411223

Programme and registration to be announced.

Lecture Series 2026

Co-Creating Global South Fashion: Chinese-Made Garments and Textiles in Mozambique

Johanna von Pezold | 6 May 2026, 14.00 | Online event

Johanna von Pezold is a postdoctoral researcher at the ERC project “China Africa Fashion Power” based at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and the Media Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam. She graduated with a PhD in sociology from the University of Hong Kong. Based on ethnographic research in Mozambique and China (2017-2024), this talk highlights how Chinese-made garments and textiles become ‘fashion’ through everyday trade in Mozambique. It shows how diverse Global South actors co-create fashion outside Euro-American systems, reshaping markets, dress cultures, and fashion mediation from the South.

Registration

Experimenting with and from Shenzhen: African Tech Markets, Relationality, and Translocal Design

Seyram Avle | 29 April 2026, 15.00 | Online event

Seyram Avle is Associate Professor of Global Digital Media in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she is also co-founder and director of the Global Technology for Social Justice Lab (GloTech Lab). Her research is on digital technology cultures and innovation in the Global South. This lecture examines ways in which Shenzhen's ethos of experimentation manifests across African markets via mobile phones and other consumer electronics. Drawing on ethnographic work and artifact analysis through a trans-local lens, it demonstrates how the dynamics of experimentation complicate notions of relationality in south-south formations and reveal imaginaries of technological futures for the Global Majority.

Registration

Screening and Discussion: Made in Ethiopia

Xinyan Yu | 15 April 2026, 14.00 | Online event

Xinyan Yu is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. She has directed, produced and shot films for PBS, BBC, NHK, and Channel News Asia. Her work has premiered at Tribeca, Sheffield Doc/Fest, and DOCNYC, and received support from Ford Foundation, IDA, and the Danish Film Institute. Made in Ethiopia lifts the curtain on China’s historic but misunderstood impact on Africa, and explores contemporary Ethiopia at a moment of profound crisis. It sheds light on how a dusty farming town finds itself at the new frontier of globalization when a massive Chinese industrial park lands in rural Ethiopia.

Registration

Smart Hardware from the Street

David Li | 18 March 2026, 14.00 | Online event

David Li has been contributing to open source since 1990. He is a Research Affiliate at the MIT Innovation Lab, a member of the Free Software Foundation and a committer/contributor to Apache projects, and is associated with Shenzhen’s open innovation ecosystem through Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab. This talk traces how Huaqiangbei evolved into a fast, bottom-up innovation engine—where components, repair culture, copy/modify practices, and dense supplier networks let entrepreneurs prototype and scale quickly. It will look at the street-level mechanics of iteration: sourcing, small-batch runs, ecosystem matchmaking, and the informal knowledge flows that turned Shenzhen into a hardware capital.

Registration

Contact

Design Theory and History
University of Applied Arts Vienna
Oskar Kokoschka-Platz 2
1010 Vienna, Austria

designtheory[at]uni-ak.ac.at
@designanthropology.bsky.social
@atdesigntheory