Anja Neidhardt-Mokoena

Design researcher and educator

About

I am a doctoral candidate at Umeå Institute of Design and at Umeå Centre for Gender Studies, both at Umeå University, Sweden. My PhD research project focuses on the question which feminist design strategies could support initiating transformational processes of design museums aiming towards more just futures. Part of my role as doctoral candidate is also teaching, for example in UID’s MA Interaction Design program. Before starting my PhD in 2019, I worked as a freelance journalist and educator in the design field. Between 2018 and 2021 I co-created the platform depatriarchise design (now part of Futuress) together with its founder Maya Ober. In 2019 I also collaborated with Lisa Baumgarten on the project Teaching Design that she continues to lead. From 2012 to 2014 I was a member of the editorial team of German design magazine form. I hold a Master degree in Design Curating and Writing (now Critical Inquiry Lab) from Design Academy Eindhoven, and a Bachelor degree in Communication Design from Academy of Visual Arts, Frankfurt am Main.

Most recently, I have presented and published academic work at the Design Research Society Conference 2022 and at the Nordic Design Research Society Conference 2023. I also continue to publish journalistic articles, host and take part in workshops, seminars and other events. Apart from this, I was active as PhD students representative, for example in the International Consortium for Interdisciplinary Feminist Research Training (InterGender) from 2021 to 2023. As both design researcher and educator, I am most interested in contributing to design’s development towards a more just discipline, mainly through applying intersectional feminist approaches to design, as well as exploring the intersections between design and activism.

Current research project

Feminist Tactics as Means to Re-Design Design

Project period: 2019-09-01 to 2024-08-31

My PhD research project explores potential ways in which the entanglement of design and its museums with oppressive structures might be understood and addressed in order to bring about positive change. It combines design research and feminist research to get insights into how established design museums have been shaped over time, how their interwovenness with systems of oppression might be challenged, un-raveled or at least be re-arranged. This thesis demonstrates that there is hope, and formulates characteristics and qualities that could make alternative design museums. The project is supervised by Heather Wiltse , Anna Croon , and Cindy Kohtala.

Teaching

I believe that there is much potential in design education to contribute to shaping a more just design discipline that itself becomes able to take part in changing society for the better. My role as design educator is informed by both intersectional feminist theories and practices. At Umeå Institute of Design, I teach in the Bachelor program, as well as in the Master program Interaction Design. I mainly bring in a critical feminist approach to the project in question, support the students to develop a foundational understanding of norm-criticality in design and of feminist methodologies and epistemologies. I am always keen to bring in sources and examples from what is usually seen as outside of the well-established design discipline, like projects by activists or fiction pieces and popular podcasts. I started working as a design educator in 2017, teaching design history and theory at the Academy of Visual Arts in Frankfurt am Main (until 2019). Since then I now and then visit different design departments as guest lecturer like at University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, and HDK-Valand at University of Gothenburg.

Selected recent publications

Book chapters

  • Neidhardt-Mokoena, A. (2023): Doing the right thing(s) when imagining and creating what is not yet. Ethics in design research workshops. In: Berg, L. (ed): Feminist Ethnographies. Methodological Reflections in Gender Research. Umeå University, pp. 90–106. Available at: https://shorturl.at/iIJY0

Journal papers

  • Neidhardt, A., and Ober, M. (2020): depatriarchise design *!Labs!*: Transforming design education. Interactions 27(6), pp. 18–21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3430650

Conference papers

  • Neidhardt-Mokoena, A., and Wiltse, H.(2023): Generous crowdedness: Cultivating space(s) for care at alternative design museums. In: Holmlid, S., Rodrigues, V., Westin, C., Krogh, P. G., Mäkelä, M., Svanaes, D., Wikberg-Nilsson, Å. (eds.): Nordes 2023: This Space Intentionally Left Blank, 12-14 June, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden. https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2023.72

Abstract: The design discipline is implicated in the trajectories that have led us to an unsustainable present. There is an urgency to re-direct the design discipline, so that it can become able to not only stay with past and present trouble, but also to develop other futures. To see how design museums might support change rather than preservation, we look to the example of protest archives. Based on an analysis of relational space, we suggest that the relative crowdedness of protest archives emerges out of matters of care, and allows for the development of alternative ways of being and creating. We thus identify a set of qualities that might be used to inform development of alternative spaces for care in design that aim to become able to respond to urgencies and to open up more just futures.

  • Neidhardt, A., Wiltse, H., and Croon, A. (2022): Beyond progress: Exploring alternative trajectories for design museums. In: Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June – 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.212

Abstract: How can design museums be disentangled from systems like patriarchy, so that they become able to support change towards more justice? To explore this question, we use our standpoint as design researchers in combination with a feminist perspective. Historically, most design museums supported a path of progress which supposedly leads straight from the past into the future. Even though today attempts to change design museums can be observed, criteria for good design and methods for collecting and exhibiting mainly stay unchanged. However, when questioning them, it becomes clear that they were shaped by a white, male, imperialist perspective. Through shifting focus and leaving the well-trodden path, we identify three possible paths toward envisioning what we call alternative design museums that might contribute to the bigger struggle for changing the design discipline, and shaping a more just world.

Journalistic articles

  • Futuress (Gisel, E. C.; Morley, M., and Paim, N.) and depatriarchise design (Neidhardt, A., and Ober, M.) (2020): Diversity Issues. Teachers and students voice their grivances around discrimination in Swiss design schools. Futuress, 4 Dec 2020 [Online]. Available at: https://futuress.org/stories/diversity-issues/
  • Baumgarten, L., and Neidhardt, A. (2020): Discrimination Follows Design – Design Follows Discrimination – Eine feministische Perspektive auf Gestaltung. form 287.
  • Neidhardt, A. (2019): History of Pockets – Im Verborgenen. form 283, pp. 74–79.
  • Neidhardt, A. (2018): VenidaDevenida – Personal Spaces. form 280, pp. 74–77.
  • Mokoena, L., and Neidhardt, A. (2018): Standardien seurauksia – Consequences of modern standards. Arkkitehti 4, pp. 74–77.
  • Neidhardt, A. (2017): Welcome to the Protest Archive. form 273, pp. 54–59.

Workshops, seminars and speaking engagements

  • Doing Knowledge in Design – Über Wissensproducktion und Wissensvermittlung im Design. Panel with Lisa Baumgarten, Anja Neidhardt-Mokoena and Mara Recklies at Interposed Symposium, University of Applied Sciences Mainz (Germany), 18 Oct 2023.

Description: How can transdisciplinary critical-emancipatory knowledge about and for design be produced? And what does a scientific collaboration which is guided by relationality and care look like? In the panel “Doing Knowledge in Design”, Lisa Baumgarten, Anja Neidhardt-Mokoena and Mara Recklies discuss these questions on the basis of their current joint research on knowledge production in design historiography and its mediation. They approach design from three different angles: critical design mediation, feminist research and philosophy.

  • Imagine Elsewhere: A Day for Re-Thinking Design Museums with Michael Law Barrett, Lisa Baumgarten, Setareh Noorani, Sabrina Rahman, Anna Westman Kuhmunen, and Vanessa Zeissig. Organised by Anja Neidhardt and Christina Zetterlund. 29 Nov 2022, 9:30 – 16:00, at Kulturparken Småland, Södra Järnvägsgatan, Växjö, and online via Zoom.

Description: Museums, as well as the design discipline, developed in parallel with Western Modernity with its way of forming knowledge and shaping a world. During the second half of the 19th century, design museums were founded in the metropolis of the global North as a method of teaching the notion of quality to producers and consumers alike. Here, the foundation for collections and archives that still have a role in how design is understood, and its history is written. It is histories that still live in understandings of design, it is histories that through design practices create futures. To formulate other histories is to make other futures possible. We would like to invite you to a day where we ask the question how can (design) museum make other histories possible? During the day practitioners and researchers who have been working with how we can re-learn and re-make museum practices will share insights into their approaches. Together we will then discuss how we can make diverse histories, and therefore diverse futures, possible. Or to put in the words of the philosopher Bayo Akomolafe: how we can go awkward. The program is available at: https://umu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?language=en&pid=diva2%3A1771821&dswid=-9954

  • Hurra Hurra Podcast, Folge 52, mit Anja Neidhardt, 12 Sep 2022 [in German]

Beschreibung: Wie kann die Designdisziplin aus patriarchalen Strukturen herausgelöst werden? Geht das überhaupt? Wie sind Designmuseen historisch mit diesen Strukturen verwoben und welche alternativen Sammlungs- und Vermittlungspraktiken brauchen wir heute? In Folge 52 des Hurra Hurra Podcast sprechen Leoni Fischer und Katharina Mludek mit der Designwissenschaftlerin Anja Neidhardt darüber, wie Designforschung im und zum Designmuseum kritische Perspektiven einbringen kann und wie Workshopformate als wissenschaftliche Methode in die Forschung einfließen können. Moderation: Leoni Fischer und Katharina Mludek. Die Folge ist online zugänglich unter: https://hurrahurra.podigee.io/56-anja-neidhardt

  • SmP Academy, Arbeitsgruppe 2 / working group 2: Das Wissen der Dinge – Was kann Design Research? Host: Anja Neidhardt (Umeå). 1–4 Sep 2022, University of Art and Design, Halle. Organised by AG Artistic Research (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes): Pascal Marcel Dreier, Leonie Fischer, Anton Jehle, Christopher Lukman, and Katharina Mludek. [German and English]

Description: Debates on artistic research assign immanent knowledge to the world of things, whether everyday objects or works of art. So, can we also view design products as traces of cognitive processes? What role does design research play then? How does a research-oriented design practice expand traditional paradigms in design, and what challenges does this pose for the communication of its results? Can critical design research bring emancipatory potential to the design museum? Based on relevant theories and hands-on tests in the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts Leipzig, we want to work out the specifics of design research without separating the lines of connection to artistic research. On the evening of the first day I gave a presentation about the role of “research through design” in my PhD project. The day after, my working group visited the permanent design exhibition at Grassi Museum in Leipzig, had a guided tour by curator Sabine Epple. On the last two days we patchworked our thoughts, questions and ideas, developed some museum hacks, analysed some of the designs we had encountered in the museum – and finally curated our own exhibition.

  • Neidhardt, A. (2021): Envisioning alternative design museums. Workshop hosted at the Design Research Society Festival of Emergence, online, September 6–17, 2021.

Description: How might design museums be dis-entangled from oppressives tructures? And how might they even take part in creating more just futures? This is an invitation to one moment in two sessions in which we will explore these questions. We will patchwork (Lindström & Ståhl, 2014) what we have experienced and what we would like to experience in, with or through design museums. Exploring our own memories can be a way to try to grasp what is often invisible and in the background: systems like hetero patriarchy and white supremacy that the design discipline and its museums are intertwined with (Buckley, 2020; Costanza-Chock, 2020). Based on and inspired by our findings, and through combining ethnography, fiction and participatory design (Ingridsdotter & Kallenberg, 2018; Blomberg & Karasti, 2013), we will place ourselves in what could be an alternative design museum and embark on a fictional guided tour through its rooms.

  • Baumgarten, L., and Neidhardt, A. (2020): Teaching Design CONVERSATIONS, 28 Jan – 11 Feb 2020, at A–Z, Berlin

Description: Teaching Design CONVERSATIONS is a temporary library and conversational format about design education from intersectional feminist and decolonial perspectives. Building on the online platform Teaching Design, the two-week long format CONVERSATIONS provided access to literature in a physical space as a framework to come together and connect with like-minded design educators – such as ourselves – and everybody interested in the field. The temporary library at A–Z grew from the collectively gathered resources from our online platform Teaching Design. The books were compiled from Berlin libraries and provided by Proqm. We invited the public to use the space to browse through the literature, read, listen and discuss. The A–Z space was transformed by commissioned work by artists and designers Benedetta Crippa (Stockholm), Peter Behrbohm (Berlin) and Fabrice Höfgen following core principles of Teaching Design: The temporary library offered access to resources to develop transformative strategies, a safe space to ask critical questions and start a dialogue and the tools to share and exchange knowledge. The program included an opening event with contributions by Imad Gebrayel, Stefanie Rau and Madeleine Morley; a workshop with Antonia Schneemann and Lisa Baumgarten, as well as a book release with Jungmyung Lee and Lieven Lahaye.

  • depatriarchise design (Anja Neidhardt and Maya Ober) (2018) as part of Building Platforms at the Swiss Design Network conference Beyond Change: Questioning design in times of global transformation in Basel.

Description: Within the framework of a free format in the foyer of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, we invited scholars like Cheryl Buckley and Ramia Mazé to workshops that we hosted: “Deconstructing Design Education” and “Deconstructing Design Innovation”. A third workshop was run together with two further reflection platforms, Decolonising Design and Precarity Pilot.

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