Decolonizing Design

Mar 3, 2023

Photo: Afy Deborah Lauren Tsogbe

About

Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook
by Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall

Presented by the MIT Press Bookstore, MIT Architecture, and the MIT Morningside Academy for Design


From the excesses of world expositions to myths of better living through technology, modernist design, in its European-based guises, has excluded and oppressed the very people whose lands and lives it reshaped. Decolonizing Design first asks how modernist design has encompassed and advanced the harmful project of colonization—then shows how design might address these harms by recentering its theory and practice in global Indigenous cultures and histories.

A leading figure in the movement to decolonize design, Dori Tunstall uses hard-hitting real-life examples and case studies drawn from over fifteen years of working to transform institutions to better reflect the lived experiences of Indigenous, Black, and People of Color communities. Her book is at once enlightening, inspiring, and practical, interweaving her lived experiences with extensive research to show what decolonizing design means, how it heals, and how to practice it in our institutions today.

Copies of Decolonizing Design will be available for purchase on site.

Speakers

  • Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall

    Dean of the Faculty of Design at Ontario College of Art and Design University

    Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall is Dean of the Faculty of Design at Ontario College of Art and Design University, Toronto, the first Black person to hold such a post in the world. Her work has been featured in Print magazine, Fast Company, AIGA's Eye on Design, and Design Observer, among other venues. She was awarded the Sir Misha Black Medal in 2022.

  • Person with close-cropped hair and white glasses, wearing a yellow top and a colorful floral jacket, standing outdoors with a blurred urban background.

    Holly Harriel

    Associate Professor of of the Practice of Democracy and Civic Engagement

    Dr. Harriel is an Associate Professor of Democracy and Civic Engagement in DUSP and is the Executive Director of MIT COLab. She has over 20 years of practitioner experience in urban planning with a focus on community and economic development, anchor institutions and civic engagement. She has led community transformative work as a senior leader at two community development corporations, a cross-sector collaborative neighborhood development non-profit, and a national community economic development funding agency. She received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania where her research focused on colleges and universities as anchor institutions in urban areas, she holds a masters degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is an alumnus of Auburn and Tuskegee Universities.

    Dr. Harriel is an active member of Civic Designers - a collective of people who come together around projects designed to strengthen democratic practice.

  • Person wearing glasses, a light-colored blazer, and a turquoise bolo tie, standing in front of MIT’s Walker Memorial building on a sunny day.

    Alvin Donel Harvey

    Alvin D. Harvey is an MIT-Boeing Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow and a citizen of the Navajo (Diné) Nation who is focused on Indigenous research methodologies and methods in aeronautics engineering. Alvin’s doctoral thesis was shaped by several goals: co-creating and applying Diné and Indigenous pillars of knowledge in aeronautics and astronautics; developing Indigenous space ethics, astrophilosophy, astrobiology, and shared engineering methodology; and capacity building and pathfinding in systems and complex theory, curriculum design, and bioastronautics.

    A postdoctoral fellowship will support Alvin’s ongoing work to develop a technical and communicative craft that speaks to the potential academic, strategic, and innovative partnerships between the space community and Native American and Indigenous communities. His objectives include centering Indigenous systems theory and knowledge in sustainable human and satellite space systems engineering, developing the first Indigenous space conference, and training a research team for a space analog mission grounded in Indigenous methodologies. Alvin’s groundbreaking work has the potential to bring innovative practices and transformational knowledge to aerospace engineering and disciplines across science and engineering.

Accessibility

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Please email us at [email protected] to request accommodations.