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.

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.

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.

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.

Dr. Emma C. Wingfield lectures in Art History and Visual Cultures at Texas A&M University in the College of Performance, Visualization, and Fine Arts. She has PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London and is the co-founder of Five | Six Textiles a nonprofit textile design collaboration with Master Weavers in Northern Côte d'Ivoire. Her research draws on collaborative fieldwork, ethnographic practices, archival, and material cultures research that engage with the pluriversal relationships embedded within contemporary art, craft, and design. This talk will examine how collaborative design enterprises can shape interdisciplinary research practices, particularly through writing, drawing, and digital humanities pedagogies. It will explore how these practices contribute to understanding embodied creativity.

Drawing on his current book project, Border Situations: Essays on Designing, Anthropologies and Politics in a Confined World, Keshavarz takes a critical look at the current state of design anthropology and ask: what is design anthropology good for, if not to rattle the foundation of the inherently violent and exploitative nature of designing caused by the anthropological project of modernity? Mahmoud Keshavarz is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University, Sweden. Keshavarz is author of The Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent (2019), co-editor of Seeing Like a Smuggler: Borders from Below (2022), and was co-editor-in-chief of the journal Design and Culture between 2019 and 2023.

This talk will offer a design and anthropological analysis of a material in the context of a community of coppersmiths (known in the local language Marathi as tambats) located in the heart of the city of Pune in Western India. As the tambats shape this malleable material into a variety of objects, copper has in turn, shaped the community into what it is today. The presentation will include theoretical perspectives and examples of designed objects. Prasad Boradkar is dean of the University of Minnesota's College of Design. He is a designer and an anthropologist with experience leading design and research teams in both academia and industry, including his most recent role as UX research and sustainability lead at Google.

Joanna Brassett is a pioneering design anthropologist and the Founder and CEO of Studio intO, a global research agency combining cultural insights with strategic design. She has worked with clients like Google, Amazon, and Pinterest in ethical AI and inclusive innovation and has been Lecturer at Central St Martins College of Art and Design in London and a Visiting Professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Anhalt. In her talk, Joanna will share how design anthropology bridges cultural insights with global strategies. Using real-world examples, she will explore the dynamic interplay of globalisation and localisation, demonstrating how a cultural approach unlocks transformative innovation in design, research, and business strategy.

Guest Lecture

Architectural Damage & Creative Engineering – Interventions & Legacies of Cold War Design for Development

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