Salary: unspecified Location: Umeå, Sweden
Type: Full-Time Postal/Zip Code: 598 96
One PhD positions in Design
Umeå University is dedicated to providing creative environments for learning and work. We offer a wide variety of courses and programmes, world leading research, and excellent innovation and collaboration opportunities. More than 4 000 employees and 36 000 students have already chosen Umeå University. We welcome your application!
One PhD positions in Design at Umeå Institute of Design
Umeå Institute of Design is a department within the Faculty of Science and Technology at Umeå University, and is one of the units at Umeå Arts Campus, www.uid.umu.se. We conduct education and research in the subject of Industrial Design on an artistic foundation. The degree programmes in Industrial Design are at the forefront internationally, and we have been named a Centre of Excellence in Higher Education on the basis of our strong commitment to teaching, advanced equipment, fit-for-purpose premises, an open and creative atmosphere and long-term, close cooperation with industry and the surrounding community. Our courses and programmes attract students from around the world – at present 27 countries – who, after completing their education, are in demand on the labour market and are quickly employed as industrial designers in Sweden and the world.
Project description
Our research program "Prototyping Practices" is investigating and inventing the future of our professions. The central idea in the research program is that design research does not only develop methods, theories, etc. for creating products, services or systems, but that it, as a response to changing foundational conditions and possibilities for design, also need to develop holistic ways of prototyping new design practices. Much like how design makes use of prototypes also in early stages of a development process to visualise and communicate ideas and issues, the basic idea here is that we can also 'prototype practices' to experiment and explore the implications of social, cultural and technological changes and challenges to design.
As part of this program, we initiate three parallel but interconnected themes: "Design and Social Innovation", "Design as a Critical Practice" and "The Work of Design after the Age of Mass-Production".
We are now looking for one PhD students to join us in this inquiry:
PhD position in Design as Critical Practice Ref. nr: 313-1226-12
While at the very forefront of materialising, expressing and communicating values and ideals, visions and perspectives, design in many ways lacks a critical discourse of its own. Throughout design history, however, there have been examples of criticism from within in which alternative values and ideals for design have been proposed. Approaches such as 'conceptual', 'critical' or 'adversarial' design have suggested a role for design aiming for debate and critique rather than solving problems for actual use.
We believe propositions such as these bring something important to design practice: the idea that critique can operate not only from the outside, as traditionally done by the art and design critic, but from within, through the design artefacts created. There is a need for developing critical practices that work with engagement rather than detached criticism. In settings of cultural heterogeneity, in which not only policy making, but also products and services, are as much about dealing with controversy as it can ever aim for consensus, an understanding of how design can be used not only to solve problems, but to find them, articulate them and expose them for debate might well become a core skill.
Design as a Critical Practice is about how practice-led and artistic design research can be used to develop and articulate critical perspectives from within design. The PhD student at this position will focus on how to articulate and form a critical design practice that engages with the world and makes use of design tactics and strategies to articulate and express diversity and even controversy as part of design practice.
Admission requirements
Essential prerequisites at the time of registration as a PhD student include:
- 240 ECTS credits (in Swedish högskolepoäng) of higher education studies of which 60 should be on an advanced, master level within Design, or proof of equivalent competence
- Or 120 Swedish old credits (in swedish poäng; corresponding to 180 ECTS-credits) of higher education studies if they were taken before July 1st 2007, or proof of equivalent competence
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