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
