Announcing the Spring 2022 Lecture Series
We are delighted to announce our Visiting Lecture Series lineup for the Spring 2022 season. (See all of our department guest lecturers here.) Read more below about Sara Hendren, Helen Armstrong, Mansi Gupta, and Pune Dracker below!
Sara Hendren
Sara Hendren is a humanist in tech—an artist, design researcher, writer, and professor at Olin College of Engineering. Her book What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World explores the places where disability shows up in design. It was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR, won a 2021 Science in Society Journalism award, and received an Honors recognition in the 2021 Massachusetts Book Awards. Her art and design work has been widely exhibited in museum exhibitions around the world and is held in the permanent collections at MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt. In 2021-22, she is a fellow in Education Policy at the New America think tank, where she is researching the future of work for adults with cognitive and developmental disabilities.
Helen Armstrong
Helen Armstrong, a Professor of Graphic Design at North Carolina State University, focuses her research on accessible design, digital rights, and machine learning. Armstrong authored Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field; Digital Design Theory: Readings from the Field; and co-authored Participate: Designing with User-Generated Content. Her new book, Big Data, Big Design: Why Designers Should Care About Artificial Intelligence, demystifies A.I.—specifically machine learning— while inspiring designers to harness this technology and establish leadership via thoughtful human-centered design. She has an MA in English Literature from The University of Mississippi, an MA in Publication Design from the University of Baltimore and an MFA in Graphic Design from The Maryland Institute College of Art. Her work has been recognized by Print and HOW Magazine, and included in numerous publications in the U.S. and the UK. Armstrong is the proud mom of a kid with disabilities and a fierce advocate for designing inclusive, intelligent, interfaces and experiences.
Mansi Gupta
Mansi Gupta is the founder of Unconform Studio, advising and facilitating workshops for organizations on strategy and systems change through a design and innovation lens. She is the author of Unconforming, a newsletter on gender equity + design. Mansi has years of experience applying behavioral research & design strategy in social impact. Previously, has led projects at Women’s World Banking in New York to increase financial inclusion among lower-income women. Prior to that, she designed games to research reproductive healthcare in rural India as a designer for Final Mile Consulting. A graduate of MFA Products of Design, she has also worked alongside some of the best creative minds at Google & Mother New York.
Pune Dracker
Pune Dracker is a researcher, writer and social justice warrior specializing in animal welfare. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction/Poetry from The New School, where she conducted psychogeographic experiments and wrote Fluxus-inspired scores, and an MA in Design Research, Writing & Criticism, where her thesis work explored scratch-off lottery tickets. Her essays have appeared in Hyperallergic, A Critical Read, and Seneca Review, and she is currently researching pop-culture-themed Halloween costumes.