Faculty

Title

Description

Heike Jenss

Transcultural Narratives of Fashion Conference

I am seeking funding to participate in the international conference “Transcultural Fashion/ Costume Narratives” that will be held in Budapest from September 5-7, 2025. The conference brings together speakers that offer insights into the cross-cultural emergence and representation of fashion, the interrelationship between fashion and media, and fashion as a social, cultural, historical, and aesthetic phenomenon.

My paper titled “A Diary in Expenses – Memory, Consumption and the Value of Clothing” is based on my reading and speculative contextualization of a three-month expense record, from 1953, that I discovered in an old leather purse my late mother kept stored in the back of her wardrobe. In it she tracked her income and expenditures for essentials such as rent and electricity, food, transportation, entertainment, body care and clothing. I view this record as a diary and window into my mother’s everyday life in mid-twentieth century Germany. I will re-track and re-imagine what she chose to purchase, what she sold and saved, and what this might tell about her living conditions, potential attitudes and aspirations in the context of an economic upheaval and rising consumer culture in the 1950s. As part of my broader research on secondhand fashion and lives in/of clothing, I will use the record as a vantage point to reflect on generational shifts, how we are socialized and learn fashion and consumption as well as ongoing changes in the perception and value of both new and old clothing.

The conference will take place in Budapest in the Műcsarnok (Palace of Exhibitions), and in Schloss Esterházy. On the final night, conference speakers will be guests at Budapest Central European Fashion Week. – Organized in Central Europe the conference provides a productive context to connect with scholars beyond my usual network in the Northern European and Anglo-American field of fashion studies. Before and after the conference, I plan to build in time to visit the Goldberger Collection of Textile Industry as well as select secondhand clothing stores as part of my broader research for my current book project.

Mev Luna

Archival Agility: Breaking with the "Document"

I will serve as the session chair, bringing together a group of international and multi-disciplinary practitioners and scholars to present on the topic. Panelists include: Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez, Assistant Professor of Photography at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, BC; Raffaela Naldi Rossano, multidisciplinary artist from Naples and Visiting Scholar, ADHT, Parsons; and Jameson Paige, Curator of Public Practice at Mural Arts, Philadelphia and part-time faculty in ADHT.

Hosted this year by Rice University and Moody Arts Center in Houston, the funding will support my facilitation of the panel session, and participation accommodations will be shared with panelists, of whom two are affiliated with the School of Art and Design History and Theory. It is my intention that this panel will also help to platform the method of interdisciplinary thinking of the department.

Session Narrative:
Although archival engagement is not a new practice for artists, scholars, and curators, the presenters in this panel demonstrate a dynamic approach to "the document" that rejects a one-dimensional, simplified reading of history. As Eduardo Cadava asserts in his book, Paper Graveyards, “To write history—to read an image—is therefore not to re-present some past or present presence…History begins where memory is endangered.” These papers intervene at the crucial point where memory is at risk, proposing innovative ways to incorporate primary source materials into artistic practice.

The panelists employ a variety of methods, including amplifying archival images within the public realm, disrupting temporal logic of the historical record through sound, translation, and transnational broadcast, and activating new archaeology which aims to connect psychological and socio-economic aspects while foregrounding queer and ecofeminist frameworks. In all of these instances, presenters contend with what it means to work with the “document” from communities on the margins, aiming to provide insights that transcend mere representation.

Ulrich Lehmann

Art in Translation - Fashion

In 2017 I was the guest editor for a special issue of the academic journal Art in Translation: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rfat20. I commissioned original translations of rare but important texts on the concept of fashion, written in various languages between 1830 and 1930. I presented the texts through a conceptual essay on “Fashion as Translation", as well as through individual introductions that contextualized each text. The editor stated: “Since its launch in 2019, the journal Art in Translation has published over fifty issues, spanning an enormous range of topics. The driving mission of the journal is the publication of high-quality English language translations of the most interesting articles on visual culture presently available only in their source language… Among the many issues, one in particular stands out for its originality, the quality of the selected texts, and the number of
downloads that it still attracts. This is issue 7.2, devoted to fashion, which was created
and edited by Ulrich Lehmann. Following his very insightful editorial, twelve
texts, translated from French, Italian, and Czech create a panoramic view of the
European debate on fashion… Such was the success of this issue that the publisher
Routledge / Taylor & Francis is currently planning to publish it as a book, scheduled to
appear before the end of 2025. A true accolade.”

Faculty

Title

Description

Amanda Bonaiuto

Magician Studio Publication

Magician' is a new collaborative project led by myself and James Thacher (a part-time faculty member at Parsons). Our goal with this project is to confront and disrupt the racial, gender, and cultural biases embedded in traditional animation education. Launching this summer, 'Magician' will debut with a foundational publication that reimagines the long established ‘Walk Cycle’, an animation exercise that animation students are required to master early in their education. Learning how to animate a walk cycle has long relied on outdated and often racist, ableist, and sexist source material. We aim to offer a free, accessible, and inclusive alternative. In our publication, walking is explored as a practice of observation and curiosity, which embraces a range of physical and psychological states without reinforcing harmful stereotypes or drawing reductive conclusions about the inherent traits of individuals or communities. It allows for a sensitive engagement with movement, identity, and lived experience.

This first publication challenges resources like 'The Animator's Survival Kit' by Richard Williams, by centering diverse cultural perspectives, lived experiences, and often excluded voices. Our publication is grounded in anti-sexist, anti-racist pedagogy, first hand interviews, accessibility, and observation from life. 'Magician' seeks to empower emerging animators with tools that reflect the world they live in, rather than learning from a harmful lens of the past.

This open access resource is designed for students, educators, independent artists, and anyone else who might be interested, and aims to democratize animation education while advocating for systemic change within creative institutions. The publication will be available both online and in print.

Carrie Hawks

Vamp Snail

In this animated feature film, vampire snails battle to protect their home, enlisting a cross-species brigade—including bats. Vamp Snail blends comedy-horror with grounded biological research to explore themes of revenge, good vs. evil, and the cost of self-preservation in a poisoned world.

The film project offers both artistic and environmental impact. Audiences will be invited to contemplate the shared cross-species consequences of human production choices in a humorous, grandiose way.

For many, the film may serve as an introduction to Cancer Alley, the stretch of land along the Mississippi River that contains hundreds of petrochemical plants and refineries. This region suffers devastating health outcomes, including high cancer rates, poor birth outcomes, and respiratory illnesses.

Ultimately, Vamp Snail will be a tantalizing and icky good time, one that asks audiences to sit with the ecological and emotional consequences of the systems we live in.
Vamp Snail is designed for multiple audiences: horror fans, gastropod and bat enthusiasts, gender non-conforming viewers, environmental activists, and residents of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. The film blends genre, science, and political urgency in a way that invites a diverse and passionate following.

To reach these groups, I plan to offer community-centered animation workshops in Louisiana, particularly in St. James Parish, where the story is set. These workshops will be paired with screening events that feature local environmental activists sharing petitions, action opportunities, and educational resources. I’m currently building on existing relationships with The Black School in New Orleans and the New Orleans Film Festival to facilitate these outreach efforts.

Freya Powell

A Dissonant Chorus

Over six years, my artistic practice evolved to prioritize voice as a medium for evoking emotional responses. Beginning with video, I've expanded into immersive performances and sound installations that blend speech and song, engaging audiences viscerally with recent tragedies.

With School-Based Funds support, I'll work with an editor on experimental essays combining research and creative methodologies from three projects: Only Remains, Remain (2021), Spaces of Exception (2023), and A Maritime Haunting (2024). These will explore grievability, complicity, and collective mourning while mirroring vocal techniques like repetition, pitch, and silence. Each essay addresses a focal point—voice, listening, or witnessing—interweaving scholarship with project scripts through the conceptual framework of ‘A Dissonant Chorus’.

‘A Dissonant Chorus’ refers to both my ongoing projects and the ensemble I direct. Drawing from Greek chorus traditions, we address contemporary tragedies often silenced by dominant narratives. In Greek tragedy, the chorus provided reflective commentary and emotional context through choral interludes. Inspired by this structure, I create narratives inviting audiences to confront modern tragedies.

The voice serves as essential material in these works. Collaborating with composers, sound designers, and performers, we employ techniques from spoken word to operatic singing, creating layered vocal landscapes. Scripts move between unison, exchange, and fragmentation, reflecting inherent tensions. Working primarily with female-identifying performers connects to historical traditions of women as mourners. These immersive performances encourage active participation, surrounding viewers with vocal expressions that prompt "vicarious witnessing" of complex loss.

While writing has been integral to my practice, transitioning to publication presents challenges. These interdisciplinary essays will draw from forensic anthropology, psychoanalysis, and migration studies while incorporating narrative fragments from performances, creating a hybrid form that embodies the performative qualities of ‘A Dissonant Chorus’.

Nika Simovich Fisher

Digital Editorial Strategy Publication

Next Spring, I'm teaching a class called Digital Editorial Strategy for Cultural Publications - (GPUB 6302). I initiated this class and it is taught in NSSR with seats reserved for Parsons CD and Journalism + Design students. The class is part seminar, part studio and it explores how publications stay sustainable in a saturated, creator economy, with an emphasis on social media, audience, and online distribution. I'm inviting five speakers from contemporary publications including Rest of World, Dirt, Metalabel, and Figma to talk about their various approaches to having a sustainable publishing practice rooted in technology or visual culture.

With this grant, I'd like to interview the speakers in advance and publish a reader that highlights the findings from the discussions. This will offer reflections on what it takes to not only write thoughtful reflections on design, culture, and technology but how to distribute it, how to connect with a specific audience, and strategies for being able to do this kind of work sustainably. The publications I'm exploring offer a variety of strategies, whether being nested inside of a tech company or having several "paid" tiers of subscriptions. The audience of the publication would be writers, journalists, and designers who are thinking about starting their own publication or the best approach to sharing their freelance work and building an audience for it.

Pascal Glissmann

From Code to Clay: 45 Symbols 45 Ways of documenting personal and planetary narratives through visual form

In 2014, a decade ago, we (this is a collaboration with Professor Arcioli in Austria and Professor Henrich in Germany) embarked on a journey to find collaborators, and meet new allies in a field we have been passionate about for years: the intersection of visual language and design education. The jumping off point for this exploration, we decided, should not be a manifesto, a mission statement, or a list of shared learning outcomes. Instead, we chose a single artifact from media art history—the Disc of Phaistos, with its unresolved code of 45 symbols—to spark a conversation about the different ways of seeing, reading, and interpreting the same thing: an unknown visual code.

Over the course of a decade, emerging artists and designers from over fifty-two countries have engaged with the Disc of Phaistos—its symbols, materiality, and mystery—as a lens to explore traces of the Anthropocene in unconventional ways. Through this process, they developed systems of visual language emerging from critical examinations of contemporary socio-political issues, reflecting both the personal struggles of daily life and the broader impact of the global poly-crisis.

This book presents a curated selection of forty-five projects—2,025 symbols in total—organized into themes:

I. Overseen Narratives, Daily Routines & Material Culture
II. Planetary Surfaces, the Anthropocene, & Geography Beyond Borders
III. Politics, Society, & the Individual
IV. Culture, Codes, and Visual Identity
V. Speculative Language, Future Archives, & the Imaginary

We’re currently in the process of signing with a European publisher that has a strong global network and following. However, we are required to contribute to the printing costs, and this proposal seeks seed funding to help support that contribution.

Faculty

Title

Description

Barent Roth

Circular Economy Manufacturing (CEMfg)

Circular Economy Manufacturing (CEMfg) designed, assembled and operates a 100% solar-powered MicroFactory on Governors Island, NYC that rotationally molds recycled single-use plastic into consumer products. Using our energy-efficient mold heating technology, we are currently manufacturing consumer products, and plan to ultimately produce essential urban objects (traffic cones, bike lane bollards, etc) enabling cities to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels, advance zero-waste initiatives, create local jobs, and utilize their abundant supply of plastic waste. To make our products - safe, single-use plastic is cleaned and run through our solar-powered shredder. The plastic flakes are then fed into our custom rotational molding machine where it is heated, rotated, and then cooled, creating a hollow product the shape of the mold cavity. We are currently presenting to visitors the principles of the Circular Economy while offering educational globes, decorative lights, and planters. Governors Island asked us last fall to design and develop interactive park furniture so we have created a new “Circular Chair”, capable of being easily turned over to provide either adult or child seat heights along with a built-in table. While we finalize the development of the Circular Chair we are also exploring ways in which to reuse biodegradable Polylactic Acid (PLA) found in both 3D printer waste from the Maker Center at Parsons and in the biodegradable beverage containers used on Governors Island.

Christine Facella

The Milkweed Fiber Companion

I’m seeking funding to complete a publication on Milkweed fiber—a sustainable alternative to cotton and polyester that also supports the endangered Monarch butterfly, which migrates from Canada to Mexico. The funding will support travel to the Rosario Monarch Sanctuary in Mexico, where I’ll document challenges faced by conservationists.

In February 2020, Homero Gómez González and Raúl Hernández Romero—two men connected to the sanctuary—were found dead, murdered for their efforts to protect the Monarchs and the forest where they hibernate. Some believe their deaths were linked to illegal logging. This project aims to honor their work while exploring how designers may unintentionally contribute to such conflicts by using non-certified tropical materials. At the same time, it emphasizes the need to support forest communities engaged in sustainable harvesting.

Though focused on fiber, this project is part of a broader, decade-long exploration into how design intersects with conservation and restoration across the Americas. This exploration has been done collaboratively as well as independently through my design studio ‘Modest’. I’m inspired by entities such as Madera Sostenibles in Nicaragua who alongside farmers, convert degraded cattle ranches to productive Teak plantations, and further process that teak into furniture - providing several modes of income for local community-members beyond cattle ranching which is the leading cause of deforestation in the Americas.

In January, during the Monarchs’ peak hibernation, I plan to travel to the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt to gather interviews and visual material for the final publication.


Completed sections of the publication include:
Properties of Milkweed fiber; Soil carbon and agriculture systems; Polyester’s health impacts (e.g., Cancer Alley); Student fiber applications; Urban cultivation (NYC); Chemical analyses; Monarch migration & climate change; Historic fiber uses

Andrea Bezzera de Carvalho Macruz

Designing with the Predictive Mind: Neuroscience and AI in Anticipatory Industrial Design

This interdisciplinary research project investigates how insights from neuroscience can reshape industrial design education and practice by framing design as a dynamic process deeply intertwined with the brain’s predictive mechanisms. Drawing on research by neuroscientists Anil Seth (perception), Lisa Feldman Barrett (emotion), Jeff Hawkins (memory and prediction), and Rodrigo Quian Quiroga (memory and recognition), it moves beyond the notion of design as merely reactive. Instead, it positions design as engaging with the brain’s continuous predictions—shaped by past experiences—where perception, emotion, and memory emerge from expectation rather than passive response.

By integrating insights from neuroscience on the brain’s predictive nature with AI tools that generate design scenarios or model user behavior, emotion, and perception, industrial design shifts from addressing passive use to shaping active, dynamic experiences. Users are no longer seen merely as consumers of objects but as predictive participants whose experiences, emotions, and memories can be meaningfully anticipated, shaped, and enriched. This project aims to develop a methodology for more emotionally attuned and responsive design—where users are not just recipients, but co-creators of meaning.

Key Objectives:
1. Develop a design methodology grounded in predictive processing theories in neuroscience, incorporating AI to enrich curriculum and studio practices.
2. Engage students in speculative and applied exercises centered on anticipation, inclusivity, and well-being.
3. Facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations with neuroscience and AI experts, including ANFA and NEUROARQ®️ Academy, to support forward-thinking, curriculum-informed pedagogy.

This initiative builds new research and teaching frameworks at the intersection of design, neuroscience, and AI. It brings together students, faculty, and external collaborators in support of The New School’s vision for progressive, interdisciplinary education.

Faculty

Title

Description

Jessica Walker

Children’s Books Under Fire: The Fight for Inclusive Stories

This proposal is written in collaboration with Caron Levis, Assistant Professor and Chair of the MFA Writing for Children/Young Adults at The New School. I am a full-time faculty in SDS but currently serving as Director of Illustration and therefore putting this proposal forward within AMT. Since joining the Illustration program, I have learned of an increased interest among our students in the children’s book industry. While we have many faculty who hold expertise in this area of publishing, we do not have a level of curricular programming that reflects this demand. We propose to use School-Based Funds to host a public panel discussion titled “Children’s Books Under Fire: The Fight for Inclusive Stories.” It will bring together leading voices in contemporary children’s publishing which we hope would include Dhonielle Clayton, David Levithan, Pat Cummings and Vashti Harrison. The panelists would be invited to discuss what we see as the troubling rise of book bans in the United States and how these restrictions disproportionately target stories centering BIPOC, LGBTQ+, immigrant, and other historically underrepresented identities. The event will be hosted at The New School and will be open to the public. It will be followed by a reception to foster dialogue among students, faculty, alumni, and invited guests. The objective is to create a space for critical conversation around the social, cultural, and political implications of censorship in children’s book publishing, and to explore ways that artists, designers, and educators can actively resist erasure through their creative work and advocacy.

Andrew Shea

AI literacy tool for creative communities

Over the past two years, I’ve been developing a tool to help creative practitioners—from designers and writers to musicians and artists—engage more critically with the ethical dimensions of generative AI. While public discourse tends to emphasize cutting-edge tools or their capabilities, there’s an equally vital need to understand how these technologies reshape the nature of creative labor, authorship, and identity.

Launched in Fall 2024, the Creative AI Magnifier has already been used by roughly 500 participants by Parsons School of Design students and community members. Based on their feedback, it's clear that people are eager for tools that help them think more deeply about AI’s impact—not just on their work, but also on values like inclusivity, environmental sustainability, informed consent, and data ethics. For that reason, I'm developing an updated version of the tool. Importantly, the tool will remain free for the public and our Parsons' community to use. This next iteration will prioritize three key focus areas that surfaced repeatedly in feedback:

1) AI & Labor — How AI is redefining creative roles, labor structures, and power in creative industries.

2) AI & Creativity — How it affects authorship, identity, and the evolving meaning of originality.

3) AI & Copyright — How to responsibly navigate intellectual property rights in AI-generated content.

The tool will be easy to use, will invite self-reflection through prompts that take just a few minutes of a participants time, will provide summaries of some of the most critical AI issues for creative communities, and creates personalized, values-based visualizations. This not only promotes ethical engagement with AI, but also gives each participant a tangible artifact of their stance in this evolving conversation.

Barbara Adams

Atlas of Speculative Storytelling (tentative)

This book project collects foundational texts (mainly excerpts) and images and will develop encyclopedia entries related to speculative storytelling to comprise an ‘atlas.’ Storytelling, as a potent discursive force in shaping our perception of the world, can play a vital role in destabilizing taken-for-granted worldviews, activating the political imagination. Whereas some stories and myths establish and entrench dominant perspectives—maintaining and validating the way things are—others imagine alternative possibilities that reach beyond the given. In moving beyond classic story arcs and hero narratives, speculative stories can reconfigure coordinates, challenging entrenched power dynamics and prompting imagination beyond the representational. The text will include newly commissioned and reprinted work from artists, social researchers, scientists, designers, and storytellers along with a series of essays I have authored. In conversation with literary science fiction, queer and feminist theory, indigenous discourses, Afrofuturism, speculative design, and other artistic and performative works, this book explores how speculative stories (in their various forms) can act as catalysts for imagining alternate presents and possible futures. It develops alternative insights and approaches that challenge the myths, metaphors, and narratives that make it difficult to center human, planetary, and multispecies justice. With a focus on transformation, this book considers subversive responses to dispossession, marginalization, precarity, and the forces that foreclose or curtail the possibility of a future. As an atlas, the text presents a historical, social, and political overview, while also giving attention to the importance of visual material. This project builds on the essays I published in 2022: “Coordinates of Speculative Solidarity” and “Art, Fabulation, and Practicing the Worlds We Want.”

Hala Malak

Maljaa: Research as Spatial Memory in Post-Conflict Beirut

Maljaa: Research as Spatial Memory in Post-Conflict Beirut is a transdisciplinary artistic research project that investigates Beirut’s bomb shelters—spaces historically marked by violence, survival, and neglect—as spatial and emotional repositories of collective memory. Taking “maljaa” (Arabic for “shelter” or “refuge”) as both a material and symbolic site, the project examines how creative practice can activate these architectures of survival to challenge dominant narratives, foster healing, and produce counter-archival forms of knowledge.

This research engages historically marginalized communities in Lebanon and the diaspora—including survivors of conflict, artists, and youth—through oral histories, site visits, ethnographic documentation, and speculative writing. By grounding the project in postcolonial, feminist, Indigenous, and Black radical methodologies, Maljaa explores how knowledge is produced through place-based memory, intergenerational transmission, and creative resistance. It seeks to address erasures embedded in official archives and reclaim suppressed narratives, particularly those related to war, gendered displacement, and cultural resilience.

The seed funding from the SBF will support the first phase of the project: fieldwork and archival research in Beirut. This includes visiting identified shelters, interviewing community members who experienced sheltering during conflict, and beginning the mapping and documentation process. It will also allow me to collect visual and sonic materials that will inform the later development of immersive installations and performances. These early findings will also be shared through workshops and informal presentations with colleagues and students at Parsons.

Aligned with EISJ priorities, Maljaa foregrounds spatial justice, memory equity, and anti-colonial research methods. It builds community across geographic, generational, and disciplinary borders while fostering artistic research that resists erasure. Ultimately, Maljaa contributes to a collective vocabulary of remembrance, resistance, and reimagining in a region—and a world—in search of refuge.

Jennifer Rittner

High School to Higher Education Bridge Research

This project seeks to learn how higher education can partner with high schools to build more robust and sustainable pipelines from the lower grades into higher education design programs. This work proposes to generate materials and programs for high school teachers, aimed at helping them teach essential design skills - technical and theoretical - across a range of disciplines in their teaching practices, including the core curriculum.

Despite efforts to increase representation in the design industries - by colleges and industry associations, in particular - limited representation among minoritized populations in higher education design programs persists. To what extent are students from low-income households or historically marginalized communities reaping the benefits of design education and design career trajectories?

The goals for this research are multifold and involve both Research (what can we learn) and Development (what might we do). Focusing here on learning, the goals are to:

*Learn about practices in design education in the High School curriculum;
*Learn about policies concerning the teaching of design in High School;
*Learn about community-based programs that supplement, complement, or support high school programming;
*Learn how design-focused Career and Technical Education schools in the NYC Tri-State area, in particular, frame their design education;
*Learn how local design industries collaborate with high schools to offer a range of learning opportunities; and
*Learn how students in schools with design education programming choose higher education opportunities.

Collaborators in this work cross four domains within the NYC Tri-State area:

1) Public High Schools (prioritizing minority-majority and/or Title 1 schools)
2) Art and Design Community-based Programs
3) Higher Education design degree schools and programs
4) Design businesses

Raz Godelnik

Buying Into the Future: A Climate Risk Tool for Equitable Homeownership

Buying Into the Future proposes to prototype a digital tool that equips homebuyers—especially first-time and vulnerable buyers—with a holistic, address-specific climate risk profile. As the housing market is reshaped by climate-driven threats like rising insurance premiums, flooding, heat, and wildfire, the ability to understand and act on climate risk is fast becoming a core equity issue. Yet current real estate platforms (e.g., Redfin, Zillow) provide only partial, surface-level disclosures—and allow some risk data to be hidden or removed by sellers.

This project builds on the critical gaps identified in the New York Times guide “How to Shop for a Home That Won’t Be Upended by Climate Change” (https://bit.ly/43ecERz), which outlined the complexity and inaccessibility of assessing climate risk for buyers. Drawing on public data (e.g., FEMA, First Street, municipal records), the tool will synthesize a broader range of risk factors—including flood, fire, heat, water access, insurance volatility, and neighborhood-level resilience—into a design-driven, user-centered assessment that can be easily completed online.

Unlike existing platforms that limit visibility, Buying Into the Future centers transparency, usability, and equity—helping users make climate-informed, future-resilient decisions. The funding will support research, prototyping, and testing, with participants including first-time buyers and retirees navigating affordability in high-risk regions.

The project aims to democratize access to critical risk information, reduce preventable displacement, and support more equitable pathways to homeownership in an era of climate uncertainty.

Rhea Alexander

Reimagining Startup Ecosystems for Gender Equity

Building on our elab research completed in 2024, presented at the DMI Academic conference in Delft (July 2024) and co-creative stakeholder workshops in 2025 (Elab), Elab is hosting a graduate elective in F25 to take the design research project into the next phase.
This initiative seeks to catalyze systemic change by shifting startup ecosystem norms from exclusionary, growth-at-all-costs models to equity-centered, multidimensional frameworks of innovation. By co-creating AI-enabled tools and strategies with female-identifying founders and key ecosystem stakeholders, the project aims to increase access to capital and redefine success metrics in entrepreneurship.
A distinctive component of this work is the longitudinal documentary video we will produce throughout the research and prototyping phases. This visual documentation will serve as both a storytelling and pedagogical asset—offering students, educators, and practitioners an in-depth view into systems thinking in action. It will illuminate how design research, stakeholder co-creation, and AI integration converge to reframe complex social challenges.
For students, the film offers a real-world model of applied strategic design, demonstrating how interdisciplinary collaboration and critical reflection can lead to meaningful innovation. It provides educators a case-based teaching tool to facilitate discussion around systems thinking in strategic design, ethical AI integration, gender equity, and reimagining power structures in entrepreneurship. It also models how AI can be used not just as a technical tool, but as a co-pilot in design workflows, helping learners analyze, ideate, and prototype responsibly and inclusively.
Ultimately, this project aims to empower a new generation of design and business leaders with the frameworks, tools, and mindsets needed to challenge systemic inequities and design for inclusive futures—within the classroom and beyond.
This initiative has involved over 28 stakeholders: female founders at pre-seed/seed stage, startup support entities (VCs, accelerators, mentors), and AI and data science professionals.
Objectives:
-Identify AI’s role in perpetuating funding disparities.
-Co-create inclusive, anonymized evaluation tools and alternative investment frameworks.
-Launch and iterate open-source prototypes that reframe startup evaluation from growth-only metrics to multidimensional impact.
-Integrate findings into the Reimagining Startup Ecosystems course, enabling students to engage in real-world interventions.
-Document the full research and prototyping process through video to serve as a reflective and pedagogical tool—showcasing the use of AI both as a co-pilot in the classroom’s design workflows and as a component of product solutions aimed at measuring and closing the gender funding gap.

Sareeta Amrute

In Unsafe Times: Cybersecurity and Anti-caste Thought

In Unsafe Times is a book project based on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2021 and 2025. This book investigates anti-caste activism in the Indian diaspora as a lens on the relationship between technology and social life. I focus in particular on protecting digital communications (cybersecurity) as a particularly fecund site not only of protecting activist practice but also of developing approaches to social and political life grounded in democratic practice and human dignity. The book is divided into four chapters bracketed by an introduction and an epilogue. I follow across the chapters activists on university campuses, in state legislatures, and in small concert halls, homes, and meeting spaces as they agitate for the end of caste discrimination and the insertion of caste into existing anti-discrimination laws. I also meet meet my interlocutors in zoom rooms, on signal chats, and on calls over encrypted channels. During my fieldwork process, I collected a treasure trove of posters, memes, and signs that make up an affective field that creates an anti-caste future in a decidedly casted present. I am applying for funds to support the creation of imagery for the book from this living archive. I plan to work with a Dalit feminist artist, Priyanka Paul, to complete these illustrations. Priyanka is the illustrator of the recently issued collection Anti-Caste Science Fiction and has expressed interest in working with me on this project. My aim in creating these illustrations is related both to questions of security and to the larger argument I present in the book. These days, images can be read through AI and other forensic technologies to extract various kinds of identifying data, from image search to identify participants to metadata to identify a creator's location. I turn toward illustration as an elegant solution to protect the participants in this study (who are acting in a highly surveilled environment) from unintended and unwanted scrutiny. Second, by working with a Dalit feminist artist, I hope my book with embody the argument it purports to describe: that thinking critically about security creates pathways for imagining a world beyond myriad inequalities, including those of case. I hope my book provides a reflection not only for those fighting against caste oppression but for all those who are looking for a way to act, even in these unsafe times.

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Title

Description

Fiona Dieffenbacher

Fashion - Faith: Rituals and Dialogues (FFRD)

Fashion - *Faith: Rituals and Dialogues (FFRD) is an exhibition and related programming slated for the Aronson Gallery at 66 Fifth Avenue from January 19th- March 6th, 2026

*Faith is used here in its broadest sense to include religious traditions as well as a wide variety of spiritual practices and worldviews.

"We all wear clothing… We all have rituals…We all are confronted with life’s biggest questions".

These 3 universal statements provide a conceptual framework for the exhibition that seeks to build on themes that emerged from the day-long public event by the same name held at Parsons on March 24th, 2023. It comprised of a series of conversations led by scholars and faith practitioners from a variety of academic specialties.

The objects exhibited demonstrate ways in which the tenets of faith inform fashion practice and inspire social justice. Given the ability of faith and fashion to shape identity, the exhibition asks the following key questions: Does “the fashioned self” resonate with or separate religious views of identity? What are fashion’s rituals and how might these relate to the ritual practices of various worldviews? Can faith traditions be reconciled with the logics and rituals of fashion? What are some of the ways we navigate space and agency through fashion and faith?

The curatorial intent of the exhibition is framed by the question " What do people go to faith for? The gallery is conceived as an embodied 'third' space offering a participatory, immersive experience for visitors for communion , refuge or healing from the context of religious faith practices. Key words: Ritual, Relational , Belonging, Embodied, Liberation.

FFRD aims to address misconceptions, presuppositions and contradictions surrounding the intersection of faith and fashion. Barriers to interdisciplinary engagement and deeper questions are at stake along with the potential to reconcile these seemingly disparate domains. FFRD offers viewers the opportunity to challenge their assumptions and relationship to religion and religious dress practices that may be perceived as oppressive or limiting personal freedoms

While The New School espouses to progressive values of equity, inclusion and social justice these have historically not been extended to faith practitioners. This project hopes to bridge that gap and seeks to foster interdisciplinary conversations among people of all faiths, religions, and backgrounds along with those who are curious and open to engaging in dialogue across difference. The intended audience is universal: The New School community,, general public and local faith-based organizations.

Robust programming will facilitate interactive conversations to allow visitors to move from passive viewers to active contributors to the exhibition itself. The gallery will offer space for contemplation and the opportunity to reflect on the themes presented. Each exhibitor is invited to host a workshop related to the work on display.

Confirmed Exhibitors:
- Cloth of Stillness by Kien Chu (garments, objects on muslin, video of holistic poetry reading)
- Kodo Nishimura - TED talk video and hi-res photos
- Michelle Tonkin - Bodhi Unbound photos
- Khawab (Muslim Futurism) by Reyhab Patel (photo exhibition)
- Gabriela Herstik, Glamour Magick - photos, and “stuff” (tarot, candles etc)
- Ahmiri Lorraine “I had a talk with God”, (BFA Fashion 23 graduate) 1 menswear look, 36” x 36” Artwork, 1 photograph
- Father Andrew O’Connor “Goods of Conscience” - Social Fabric Video
- Haute Hijab (Melanie Turk) The designer/CEO is interested (Shireen)
- Rabbi Tailor - Yosel Tiefenbrun - rabbi and tailor, NYC
- Zeighna Butteen) BFA fashion Graduate
- Jontay Kahmakoatayo, MFA Fashion Design & Society, Rising Plains Cree graduate, MFA FDS
- Patrick Boylan- Grace Liturgical Vestments

Hallway
-FFRD Muslin reflections from event March ‘23 & FEW workshop, October ‘23
- Nun's habit-inspired wedding dress, 1946, Kellen Archives
- Bebe Ravi by Siamanda Chege (Image boards - mission/vision of org)
- Alivia by Jovana Mirable (images with brand mission/ story of artists) GRADUATE BFA
- Ghost Dancer, Sariah Park (indigenous designer)
- Taylor Uchytil (indigenous designer) AAS graduate
- Isabella Dawn Notaro - MissFinchNYC -Modest fashion line, orthodox Jewish Community
- Shireen Soliman- Fashion Identity Workshop Illustrations/Assets/Video
- Fiona Dieffenbacher - Fashion-embodied soul- dress diagrams
- Freeman Lam, Regent College BC, Arts - Clothed in Glory: Learning to Embody Christ Photographs

Examples of Talks, Panels and Workshops:

Keynotes:
"Deconstructing the “tourist gaze that fetishizes veiled women” - Hassan Hajjaj, contemporary portrait artist
"Intersectional Identities" by Kodo Nishimura, Japanese Buddhist monk, Drag queen and Celebrity make-up artist (BFA Fine Arts alum)

Panel discussions:
"Perceptions of Masculinity" panel discussion led by Mark Larrimore
"Silhouettes of the Soul: Meditations on Fashion, Religion, and Subjectivity" moderated by
Jeanine Viau, Associate Lecturer of Religion and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Florida, Otto Von Busch, Professor of Integrated Design, Parsons School of Design with Kodo Nishimural and Fiona Dieffenbacher, Associate Professor of Fashion, Parsons School of Design
"Impacts of Colonization " moderated by Mark Larrimore

Workshops:
"The language of performance" half-day or full day Meditation workshops moving through the 4 postures of the Buddha, facilitated by Kien Chu
“Contemplative Craft/ Reflective Making" facilitated by Fiona Dieffenbacher
Muslim Fashion / Social Justice and Fashion / Fashion and Memoir / Identity and Narrative by Shireen Soliman
“Fashion, Faith and Social Justice Entrepreneurship” panel discussion with Jovana Mullens and Siamande Chege, moderated by Fiona Dieffenbacher
"Sartorial Stories: A Journey of Faith and Fashion" - a digital storytelling workshop, Roman Mirza
"Faith in Fashion: A Visual Dialogue" by Romana Mirza
Sewing Circles led by Otto Von Busch

***Exhibitors and workshops are subject to change

Laura Lanteri

TRACING BEAUTY

This documentary investigates the hidden mechanics of cultural oppression embedded in modern advertising—specifically how white supremacy, colonialism, ageism, ableism, sexism, and sizeism are perpetuated by fashion and beauty marketing, especially on social media platforms. Through a dual-narrative structure, the film exposes the psychological and emotional manipulation at the heart of today’s influencer economy and branded content, while also interrogating the institutional forces that sustain these practices.

On one track, we will interview families affected by the tragic loss of teenage girls to suicide—probing how algorithmic targeting, peer pressure, online harassment, and unattainable beauty standards contributed to their mental health crises. These intimate accounts serve as a humanizing counterpoint to the systemic critique, highlighting the devastating real-world impact of manipulative advertising.

On the second track, we will engage directly with advertising professionals—copywriters, art directors, digital marketers, and social media strategists—to reveal how audience profiling, aspirational aesthetics, and monetization pressures shape the narratives young audiences consume. We aim to unpack how capitalistic imperatives—especially the demand for ever-increasing profit margins—lead to exploitative marketing decisions and reinforce exclusionary ideals.

The documentary is led by Laura Lanteri in collaboration with Dr. Sam Mejias and Professor Khary Simon. Together, we bring a multidisciplinary lens spanning media studies, visual culture, critical race theory, and youth advocacy. Our objective is not only to expose harmful advertising paradigms, but also to amplify calls for structural change—holding platforms and brands accountable while exploring pathways for more ethical, inclusive communication practices.

Liliana Sanguino

Millones de Maneras: Pluriversal Fashion Zine

This proposal supports the development of a Tri-lingual (Spanish-English- Embera) fanzine-style publication that documents and reflects on the creative and social justice dimensions of Millones de Maneras. Expanding on ongoing collaborations with Trans Indigenous artisans from Karmata Rúa, Antioquia, the zine will serve as both a platform and an archive—centering the artisans’ narratives, design processes, and evolving relationships with fashion, identity, and autonomy.

Featuring photography, interviews, and short texts, the publication will combine artistic documentation, showcasing pluriversal and community-rooted approaches to fashion. The zine will be curated by Liliana Sanguino in collaboration with a visual designer, and distributed both in print and digital formats to communities engaged in EISJ work.
Its goal is to spark dialogue around inclusive, community-based design while amplifying Indigenous and LGBTQ+ voices from the Global South. As the first publication of Millones de Maneras, it will also function as a replicable model for future zines, collaborative exhibitions, and community publishing initiatives centered on Indigenous authorship.

Founded in 2019 by fashion academic Liliana Sanguino and Bogotá-based designer Laura Laurens, Millones de Maneras merges weaving techniques with contemporary fashion. The project promotes cultural sustainability and ethical fashion practices while generating economic opportunities for its artisan collaborators. Recognized by the United Nations Fashion and Lifestyle Network, it aligns with UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 16, and embodies outcomes in Creative Work, Design, Exhibition, and Community-Engaged Research.

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Hazel Clark

Fashion in American Life: Index

To fund the professional creation of the index for the anthology: Fashion in American Life, to be published by the academic publisher Bloomsbury Visual Arts in October 2024, co-edited with (MA Fashion Studies alumna) Dr Lauren Downing Peters, with contributions by 14 authors, including 2 MA Fashion Studies alumna, one current and one former ADHT ptf, in addition to scholars, researchers, curators and academics from across the USA.

Lorraine Karafel

Conference and Research Travel to England in July 2024

I am requesting funds for travel to Cambridge, UK. In Cambridge, I will be co-chairing a session at the Historians of Netherlandish Art's conference at the University of Cambridge. The session, "Connecting Threads: Tapestries and Cultural Exchange in the Low Countries and England" highlights the work of emerging scholars in the field and new approaches to the study of textile history. My co-chair is Dr. Elizabeth Cleland, Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I will be doing research in London before and after the conference. At the British Museum, I will study drawings made in preparation for tapestries. At the Victoria and Albert Museum, I will view the new installation of and information related to Raphael's cartoons for the Acts of the Apostles tapestries, works that I have written about extensively and which recently underwent digital imaging analysis using a new ground-breaking technique. This research is related to my current book project, Early Modern Tapestry in Europe: Art and Process, specifically for the chapter dealing with the tapestry design process. I will also meet with my book editor at Yale University Press while in London. While in London, I also expect to do some research for a new graduate elective course I will be teaching in Fall 2024, Collectors, Collecting, and the Origins of Museums, looking particularly at the histories and installations of works at the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, as approaches to public presentations aim to become more inclusive.

Margot Bouman

Sampling as a Site-Specific Practice in Contemporary Art

Before June 30, 2024, I will be submitting the final version of my monograph, Sampling as a Site-Specific Practice in Contemporary Art to Bloomsbury Academic Publishing. I anticipate its publication in early 2025. I submitted the draft manuscript in September 2023 and received the readers’ report in January 2024. Sampling as a Site-Specific Practice addresses examples of contemporary art that date from the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Its case studies are multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, and medium fluid. I use the terminology of the present to activate the concepts of postproduction and sampling, of mirroring and of mobile site specificity, of now-time and dragging, of race and gender interrogations, of fluidity, and of Drag King performance as key issues in 21st century art. The first chapter uses a work by Christian Marclay to address the fluidity of how time is perceived; the second addresses the fluidity of how we garner knowledge through an analysis of a retrospective exhibition of work by Christopher Williams; the third addresses the fluidity of masculinity and queerness through works by Douglas Gordon and Isaac Julien; and the fourth addresses the fluidity of feminism, gender, and masculinity through Drag King performances in the work of Amie Siegel and Andrea Fraser. All address power and its inverse using approaches to sampling, and their ambivalent contexts. In its next phase of preparation for publication, between July 1-September 1, 2024, the manuscript will need be copy edited and its index written, two tasks that I will be outsourcing.

Ulrich Lehmann

Revolution and Progress

My extensive monograph for the MIT Press will be published as a hardcover-edition and for direct open access in Winter 2025, making a digital version of the book instantly available free for all. The book is entitled Revolution and Progress: The Making of Design 1789–1919. It intends to open up the field of design studies, revealing the specific origin of design within a social history of production. Stripping design of the linear formalism or subjective biographies relied on in histories of (decorative) art and design, and of the reading of objects through rituals of consumption in material culture, the book instead explores design through the conditions of labor, materials and techniques that produce it. Its chapters move across the long 19th century: the period bounded by the French Revolution in 1789 and the Russian Revolution in 1917.

For the book, students from Parsons and I have created sets of images that depict historical designs which have only survived in archival descriptions and hidden testimonies. We show the recreation of wallpaper pattern within interiors of the Revolution, by multiplying rare samples into a pattern, situating them within archival evidence and inserting them into historic images. Another set of images designs a barricade of 1849 that is documented only in written police reports and eyewitness testimonies, and which we can now navigate through motion software to represent the historic assault by government forces. A third set of images depicts a sugar boiling house of 1790 that exists solely in architectural plans and sections.

Francesca Granata

Greer Lankton: Doll-Making as Queer Worldmaking

I am completing the first book on Greer Lankton, a trans-artist active in the East Village in the 1980s and 1990s for University of Minnesota Press. I am planning to write the book during my sabbatical in Spring 2025. I have completed my research with the exception of a visit to her surviving family, and their holdings of her work. The family is based near Minneapolis.

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Ben Katchor

New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium

This is the 13th year of an ongoing weekly lecture series for artist/writers working in various text-image forms: comics, picture-stories, animation, etc. at which to present and critique current work open to students and the public. Participants are practitioners, critics and historians from around the world. Lectures and follow-up discussions consider new models for the sustainable creation and distribution of text-image work. The Symposium offers an ongoing place to learn and think about the traditions and future of text-image work. Thousands of viewers participate through live in-person events and videos posted online. https://nycomicssymposium.wordpress.com.

Caspar Lam and YuJune Park

Typographic Tools through the Lens of the Chinese Script

We are seeking funds to hire a developer who can help train a generative AI model for the development of new visual forms of Chinese type. As a non-alphabetic script containing up to 100,000 variant characters, the script is one of the most difficult for typographers to design for. The script’s expansive and unique properties has eluded traditional attempts at type making throughout history and has confounded the Western narrative of the supremacy of movable type printing.

This endeavor builds upon our previous research in Chinese type, most notably our forthcoming chapter in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Typography that maps the historical development and visual parameters of the script. This mapping has been based on a database of historic Chinese typefaces, concepts, and references— the Chinese Type Archive— that we first launched in Jan 2020. The Chinese Type Archive addressed the lack of foundational knowledge in Chinese type by creating a bilingual guide. Because typography has not traditionally been regarded as a discipline in China, our research sought to find extant typefaces, compile concepts, and provide translations to create bridges between Chinese and Western type. This is significant because even within Chinese typographic circles, terminology has not been standardized. The general confusion between historical and contemporary notions makes this area difficult for communication designers to understand.

Based on the corpus of data we have collected through the Chinese Type Archive, our goal is to train a model that can be used as a new tool for developing Chinese typefaces. Because Chinese typeface development has usually been undertaken by large corporations like Google due to its complexity and cost, this new tool would radically alter the discipline and empower ordinary designers to push the boundaries of graphic form making.

Harpreet Sareen

ephemera

The effects of a hierarchical relationship of humans with non-humans are now more pronounced than ever. Anthropogenic ecological stressors, including high levels of carbon dioxide, water scarcity, habitat fragmentation have led to disruption of climate systems, in turn endangering many local and global species.

ephemera is an installation (to be presented at Ars Electronica Festival) composed of glass vessels that show bubble images representing animals from all continents and ecologies currently under threat as per the IUCN Red list. These self-assembling bubble pictures, formed by controlled nucleation of CO2 bubbles in water, are in a homeostasis at the beginning of the installation and shrink each hour to eventually disappear in a few days. The tension between the present endangerment and the urgency of the future action, manifests in the shrinking of these bubbles, invoking unnatural ephemerality due to the human effect. The fauna pictures in this installation, composed of carbon dioxide bubbles, symbolize the transitoriness of now threatened species.

Jane Pirone

Enchanting Rarities and Enduring Extremophiles

Grounded in a series of site engagements that collaborate with non-human botanical/fungal/bacterial symbionts, this hybrid-form, speculative fabulation will traverse deep time, historical pasts, the present and future time horizons while reimagining a multispecies cosmopolitics in the context of the climate crisis.

I’m seeking financial support for equipment and travel expenses for a fieldwork research trip to a remote habitat hosting unique and endangered species critical to this body of work. I will foreground sensory-oriented fieldwork and imagination as a mode of inquiry and as a site of political creativity. This research will entangle with the extremophilic cryptogamic ground covers (CGCs), organisms comprising assemblages of bryophytes (hornworts, liverworts, mosses), fungi, bacteria, lichens and algae, which are directly descended from the first complex terrestrial ecosystems and living on the Volcanic lava fields of the Reykjanes Pennisula (UNESCO GEOPARK) in Iceland. By collaborating with these other-than-human species, I will challenge our chrononormativity, heteronormativity, and anthropocentricity while exploring adaptation, displacement, extinction, migration, and the complex, interrelated, socio-cultural ideas about people’s relationships with one another, with place, with other beings, and with the land. I’m particularly interested in leveraging the technical language of the natural sciences, often appropriated and/or criss-crossed into the cultural (and often rationalizing systemic and institutional oppression of outliers of so-called ‘norms.’) With these field-based, creative explorations of catastrophic climate conditions, I will continue to develop an expansive array of imaginative possibilities and propositions which will directly relate to the course I’m teaching this Fall, “Multispecies Design.”

Kate Wolkoff

The Life and Death of Migrating Birds

"The Life and Death of Migrating Birds" is a project that proposes to harness the synergy between photography and science to tell the story of birds and our changing climate. The project creates a photographic taxonomy of migrating bird habitats and light pollution along the Atlantic Flyway from Cuba to Canada. The Atlantic Flyway is the path along which migrating birds travel over thousands of miles twice each year in an astonishing feat of endurance and navigation.

I am applying for funding specifically to travel to the Zapata Peninsula in Cuba in January 2025, which at that point will be the final destination of the project. I have identified seven locations along the Flyway that are hotspots for migrating birds, where they can find food, water and safety. These locations are Grand Manan, Canada, Appledore Island, NH, Block Island, RI, Cape May, NJ, Jekyll Island, GA, Brownsville, TX and Zapata Peninsula, Cuba. Each of these locations has a historic bird banding station where data is collected about the species that fly through. The experts in each location are my guides to learn more about the communities that are built around these stations and the important local work that is being done to protect the birds and their habitats.

The final outcome of “The Life and Death of Migrating Birds” will be an exhibition that maps the flight of the birds along the Atlantic Flyway. The photographs will reveal the hazards facing migrating birds, including light pollution and the collapse of natural habitats, but they will also reveal the respites the birds find in protected areas and the love of the people who study and protect them.

Kelly Walters

AMT / Parsons Pop-Up Book Fair + Share

Kelly will be inviting designers Kathleen and Chris Sleboda of Draw Down books to lead a workshop and pop-up book fair at Parsons. In this two-day event, AMT / Parsons community members, students, staff and faculty, will be invited to gather, trade and share zines, books and other print ephemera that supports independent publishing and zine-making culture. Kelly is particularly interested in ensuring this event features print works from marginalized groups and will highlight BIPOC, queer and feminist approaches to print-making in design. Kathleen and Chris Sleboda will give a guest lecture in tandem with this event to kick-off the fair. Their lecture will highlight their publishing practice and their expertise in forming a visual culture resource that specializes in graphic design, typography, art, risograph, photography and subcultures. As noted on their website, “Draw Down is a publishing platform with a focus on graphic design, typography, photography, and illustration. Draw Down has published over sixty-five titles and participated in more than fifty book fairs since launching in 2012. Its online shop features a selection of work from graphic design programs as well as a curated collection of art and design books.”

Kyle Li

Design Good Living With Emerging Tech

The program consists a series of hands-on workshops. It is focusing on designing good living for the future with technology. The main objective is to work with participants to look into our day-to-day activities and re-imagine them in a future scenario with emerging technologies such as MR, Spatial Computation, and AI. We will start out by looking for insights from our daily life in connection to speculative futures. We then deconstruct available emerging technologies with users in mind and brainstorm how those insights could lead to good living experiences with technology. When it comes to hands-on prototyping, we will introduce a collection of custom tools and pipelines from my own RSCP work that are designed to greatly lower the technical burden for non-tech creatives and bypass expansive fees for students for platforms such as Apple Vision Pro and Meta 3.

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Adegboyega Adefope

OAYE AI &Technology exhibition of work from the Boys and Girls Club in Mission, South Dakota

As part of PARSON's continued focus on Equity and Social Justice, this proposal focuses on "other" communities and their relation to space and their environment. It invites insight into the Indigenous Lakota community's regard for space and their environment, which includes their engagement with technology. It offers our students an opportunity to engage with underrepresented indigenous communities.

Indigenous scholars worldwide have advanced an ethical framework for technological advancements based on traditional indigenous cosmological concepts. Lakota scholar and artist Suzanne Kite advocates that indigenous communities embrace those advancements, enter into meaningful relationships with the technological systems created due to those advancements, and welcome those systems into their kinship circles.

Youth from the Boys & Girls Club on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota used
photography to examine their environment from this framework. With assistance from teaching artists affiliated with Five Corners Collective, Inc., they have created a visual representation of a Lakota kinship circle welcoming technology into its midst.
Inclusion in a kinship circle is of great importance, and in many indigenous cultures, kinship is a central organizing principle that influences all aspects of daily life. Members of the circle have a reciprocal duty to respect one another and their environment. This duty necessitates prioritizing the collective well-being over the economic and political interests of a minority.

The project proposes three components: (1) Installation and display of the OAYE exhibition in PARSONS. This exhibition shows the work of Youth from the Boys & Girls Club on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. (2) Symposium with Susan Kite - Lakota Scholar, Robin Dahlberg - Teaching Artist, and Sadie Red Wing - Graphic Artist to discuss indigenous communities' relation to their environment and its inclusion in their Kinship circles and the proactive embrace of technology into the Kinship circles. (3) Transportation and hosting of Five youth members of the Boys & Girls Club of South Dakota to New York to participate in the event and engage with the PARSONS community. They will be invited to participate in curated design activities in the school.

Carly Cannell

WHEN PLACES SPEAK

WHEN PLACES SPEAK is part of a global photography exhibit that provides a voice to physical places associated with sex trafficking [founded by Dr. Tasoulla Hadjiyanni of University of Minnesota [ designagainsttrafficking.com ]. The exhibit's New York City edition will unveil the hidden yet visible facets of sex trafficking across all boroughs. By exposing a range of sites—from recruitment hotspots, transit routes used for moving victims, to locales of illicit activities and recovery spaces for survivors—we aim to reveal the extent of trafficking within familiar settings. The exhibition employs a rich, multi-sensory experience through soundscapes, videos, and photographs, inviting visitors into the reality of these spaces to foster empathy, awareness, and action.

The first public introduction to the project took place March 5-15th at the Parsons 2 W 13th Street lobby windows to align with the IDEC National Conference taking place in NYC March 6-9th. An extended showcase just debuted during the NYCxDesign festival [May 20-22] as part of a broader exhibition of works that co-curated [along Annabelle Schneider] to broaden our reach further, appealing to local, national, and international visitors. My next focus is creating a comprehensive exhibition for the Kellen Gallery, which will run from June 19-August 5th, 2024, continuing the conversation. My goal is to include panel discussions with founder of WHEN PLACES SPEAK, Dr. Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, Lori Cohen, Chief Executive Officer of PACT, WeArePact.org and other anti-trafficking organizations and survivors.

This project is a collaborative endeavor, drawing on the talents of students and faculty at Parsons and The New School through research, site visits, and creative expression. This exhibit, while unique in its focus and execution, builds upon a legacy of similar exhibitions around the world, leveraging an existing infrastructure for dissemination.

Glenn Shrum

Pioneers of Lighting Design

From its founding and continuing today, architectural lighting design has been dominated by North American and Western European individuals and perspectives. This proposal aims to remedy this inequity by identifying and recognizing the contributions of individual architectural lighting designers who established the field in historically underrepresented local regions and countries. The project's long-term goal is to provide every young lighting designer with a resource to understand the discipline's origins in their home country/region.

The project aims to identify, catalog, and celebrate early groundbreaking lighting designers from regional and local communities where this history has yet to be told. Parsons Lighting students will organize and conduct online interviews to uncover and document this history. As the birthplace of lighting design education, Parsons holds a privileged position in our field. This project will use our stature to document untold stories and facilitate professional connections that extend beyond this project.

Michele Gorman and Brian McGrath

Space as Matrix: A Radically Inclusive Open Call

The 2021 exhibition at the Barbican in London How We Live Now: Reimagining Spaces with Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative, was renamed Space as Matrix at ETH Zurich, where it evolved to include the work of New York based architect, and founding Chair of the Architecture Department at Parsons, Susana Torre. Mchele Gorman and Brian McGrath have secured Aronson Gallery to bring a further evolution of this exhibition to Parsons in the Fall of 2025, and have included the research and work of McDavid, Moon and Scheir under the umbrella of Space as Matrix. In the wake of a global pandemic, a renewed consciousness against entrenched racism and segregation urges us to return to feminist ideas, some long-ignored, that prioritize inclusion, health and well-being.

We seek to uncover the work of feminist, queer and intersectional artists, designers and architects who, under the umbrella of Space as Matrix, stand against the patriarchal hierarchization of space and the relations within it. Our proposal is to convene a year-long set of intersecting activities to generate a public discussion with a new generation of students and practitioners around the contemporary relevance of a radically inclusive feminist spatial theory. Our individual research will come together through collaborative and curatorial activities consisting of archival visits, reading and writing retreats with invited guests, culminating in the drafting of an Open Call in Spring 2025 for proposals to be included in the Fall 2025 exhibition and symposium.

Our call includes photography, art, performance, film, digital media and technology alongside ethnography, memoir, essays, and poetry. We will include the work of artists, writers, and thinkers who explore spatial matrices in relation to cultural identity, the body, gender and sexuality, class, race and ethnicity. We look for creative ways to locate and narrate the constantly shifting tempos, maps, and borders of our lived experience and memory through a matrix of spatial stories of the wardrobe, the interior, the building, and the city.

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Alaiyo Bradshaw and Matt Whitmann

ANALOG ANIMATION: EXPLORATIONS AND CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

The research project described below is continuing and evolving from its inception in 2023.
Reflecting on what we teach, research and practice, our mutual interest in analog making processes - ones that require direct, indexical imprinting of either light or pigment onto a substrate. Through chance, intuition, and disruption, we discover, explore and merge our analog work in printmaking and film.

Materials, such as paper, ink, prints, film, cameras, and printing presses, guide the work as we explore tactility, the physicality of the medium, and how these materials respond to us as people and to each other. In particular, we emphasize media and processes that minimize a harmful environmental impact. For instance, Alaiyo’s use of soy-based inks, which negates the use of harsh chemicals for clean-up (using just soap and water instead). The film for the project will be processed using an eco-developer recipe based on coffee and ascorbic acid (vitamin C).

Process noise and dialogue from the documented experiences of mutual-making and mutual-interviewing, recorded during my live printmaking process, intertwined with the spontaneous, ambient and naturally occurring sounds of its recording onto film and analog audio tape will form the space of the documentary.

Barbara Adams

Bordering Practices: Rivers, Seas, and Water Policies (working title)

This is a multi-pronged research project that builds on work started in 2020 focused on displacement. This includes continued collaboration with UNHCR and UN Global Pulse using speculative approaches to reimagine humanitarian response and futures it shapes. Thus far, this work has resulted in a course co-taught with UNHCR staff, an exhibition with programming, conference presentations, webinars, and the book Project Unsung. This work also builds on research and creative interventions in Port Bou, Spain (2023-2024) focused on the Spain-France border tracing the trail Lisa and Hans Fittko established as an escape route from Nazi-occupied France.

After walking the trail, I am currently creating a series of interventions that include a short film and signage. This is being done in conjunction with the Port Bou-based organization, Alarm Phone, with whom I am currently conducting ethnographic fieldwork. This volunteer organization hosts a self-organized hotline for refugees that amplifies SOS calls, placing pressure on rescue entities in the Aegean and the Mediterranean Seas. As the work with Alarm Phone continues, I am partnering with collaborators on the ground to explore the significance of seas and rivers in bordering practices. Along with geographer and political scientist (and Alarm Phone volunteer), Tiago de la Cruz, I am studying practices of bordering as neither constant nor consistent but as highly contingent and adaptable—something that is particularly evident when water is involved. Together we are learning from historical examples such as the Chamizal dispute between Mexico and the US over the meanderings of the Rio Grande and looking at the contemporary status of this river along with that of the Guadiana that separates Spain and Portugal.

We study how the separation of land from and with water is created and maintained. By looking at boats, dams, levees, pumps, walls, bridges, and other artifacts and elements of the built environment, we focus on how the unstable properties of water shape borders. From the law of accretion to the establishment of international waters, we look at how rivers and seas are both situated in and beyond cultural differences and sighted beyond human history and constructions. We consider how this shapes humanitarian practices, forms of displacement, and mobility.

Gabriela Rendon, Eric Brelsford (annualized PTF), and Robert Robison (PTF)

Housing Justice Oral History Project

The Housing Justice Oral History Project is a digital platform and repository that connects people’s experiences within NYC's housing movement and the often overlooked work of housing organizations, coalitions, and networks through the lens of community members in the form of oral history interviews and organizing archival material. Conceived within the Parsons Housing Justice Lab, a beta version of this project was launched in November 2023 with five ongoing housing justice-centered oral history projects. Our proposed scope of work includes: completion of ongoing oral history projects, integration of existing oral history projects, some of which lack visibility and attention, and community outreach and training to expand the archive with new projects following best practices.

At the core of this project is documenting, preserving, and disseminating the voices and insights of New Yorkers who have played a pivotal role in shaping the city’s housing movement through their past and ongoing organizing efforts. It sheds light on the enduring struggles against redlining, predatory practices, displacement, housing precarity, homelessness, and environmental injustices. These struggles, endured over decades, have disproportionately impacted Brown and Black communities and gradually erased ethnic cultures, echoing the urgent need for recognition and action to preserve the homes, cultures, and neighborhoods of low-income, working class, and immigrant communities.

This project embraces the practice of oral history and critical cartography. Oral history challenges academic extractive research methods by using community-driven modes of information gathering and knowledge creation traditionally used by Black, Brown, indigenous, immigrant, and underserved populations as a mode of knowledge transferring. This method of interviewing weakens the distinction between “researcher” and “researched” in favor of a more honest relationship based on mutual responsibility, trust, and care. Within this framework, narrators and interviewers create a historical narrative together, one that emphasizes the memory, identity, and life experience of the narrator toward collective knowledge creation and sharing.

The oral history interviews created and integrated in this project include interview audio recordings, written transcriptions, indexing as well as an array of archival materials in one accessible location. As all oral histories, ours will be preserved in archives that are accessible to the public in order to provide a direct, lasting benefit to popular knowledge.

This multi-year project brings together students, faculty, researchers, activists, tenants, community-based organizations, housing experts, and a range of other stakeholders to engage in dialogue, research, and the creation of popular knowledge. It is open to all programs and schools across the university.

Jennifer Rittner

I Am A Design Student

This request is for continued support of research originally begun in 2022-23 with the Black Experience in Design Little Library and Consortium attended by Tri-State area high schools with majority Black and PoC populations, which I followed up in 2023-24 with a plan to learn more about how students from currently under-represented communities interact with design studies and careers. Why do colleges and universities continue to fail to attract Black students, in particular? With this project, I am provoking a question about whether the opacity of design studies might be a factor? We learned from the consortium in 2023 that the art and design programs at participating tri-state area schools is almost exclusively on fine art, with some small nods to graphic design (posters/murals) and digital design (mostly STEM-centered classes that include coding). If we provide more transparency and access to the range of design studies and potential careers students follow, might it inform high school students' awareness and understanding of their opportunities in design and design-related fields? Might it inspire them to learn more about how their interests and capacities align with our practices?

Killeen Hanson

Design & Strategy Lecture and Dinner Series

This funding would support an AY24-25 public lecture series around design, strategy, and transdisciplinary ways of making, being, and knowing.

Specifically, funding would support guest speaker honoraria and expenses related to post-talk dinners with a small group of students. It would build on the successes and lessons learned from the AY2324 BBA Design and Strategy Lecture Series, specifically the FA23 and SP24 talk-dinner with Rich Silverstein and Katie Osborn, both of which were phenomenally successful in terms of student attendance and in quality of interactions.

Mark Randall

Stingless Bees: Education and Economic Development

This proposal is to support travel expenses for a honeybee research trip to Kenya in December 2024 with The Global Portal Institute.

The Global Portal Institute, founded by Lucy Xu and Nicolas Picat Saridaki, is a non-profit organization that builds networks across cultures to address issues of climate change, education and pollination through stingless bees. In bio-diverse rich tropical areas of the planet where stingless bees thrive, the Institute works with local communities, women's cooperatives, schools, and other institutions to create sustainable, scalable programs, facilitating alternative education and income opportunities through stingless bees for the good of all. Stingless bees produce honey that is highly prized and of high value due to its antibacterial properties. This can be a source of income in remote parts of the planet. In addition, sustaining this pollinator – along with all pollinators – allows our plant to thrive.

The Global Portal Institute has offered me access to their network during my time in Southeast Asia. They are also proposing an event for Climate Week in New York City this September 22 – 24 and they have asked me to participate.

Miodrag Mitrasinovic

The Making of Corona Plaza, Queens

This is a continuation of my project which has focused on the making of Corona Plaza, Queens. Corona Plaza, as a “dignified public space for immigrants,” was created under the auspices of the NYC DOT’s Plaza Program during a tend year period (2008-2018). It represents the only true public space for immigrant communities between Jackson Heights and Flushing, Queens, and has recently become “the center of Latinae cultures” in New York City.
My RAs and I have been working on the video documentary on the process of creation of the
Plaza. Previous funding from School-Based fund and from the Zolberg Institute has enabled
interviews done over the past year, and other production expenses. We are now doing post-production and I need additional funds (for RAs) to complete the film. The documentary
is bilingual (English-Spanish), 60-minutes long, and will be shown at events, conferences, and at the Queens Museum in Fall 2024.

Nadia Williams

Parsons x Pocoapoco Residency

Beginning in Summer 2024, 4 Parsons Scholars Program (PSP) alumni will be selected annually to attend a 10-day summer residency at Pocoapoco in Oaxaca, Mexico. This opportunity will build on the PSP mission and vision and will be provided at no cost to program alumni, in order to expand access to deeply meaningful postsecondary arts opportunities.

With the support of Matthew Villarreal, I have established a collaboration between the Parsons Scholars Program and PocoaPoco, which is a nonprofit arts and cultural organization in Oaxaca, Mexico, that supports “creative work and cross-cultural dialogue as essential tools for education, empathy and positive social change.” Through the Pocoapoco curriculum, the selected alumni will engage in a reciprocal exchange with local artists and cultural practitioners in Oaxaca, exploring themes

Otto von Busch

Not thinking like a designer - finishing/printing book

I am finishing a short book on the prevalence of "design thinking" in design, and its risks, pitfalls and hypocrisy. The book unpacks how "design thinking" has merged with progressive/liberal capitalism and limits the possibilities and solutions design has to offer. This is especially urgent when it comes to working with marginalized populations and justice issues, as the way "justice" is thought of is often disempowering, rather than empowering. The book is a short and easy read to be printed by Set Margins in the Netherlands.

Raz Godelnik

Business as a Designer: How Businesses Can Drive the Shift to 1.5°C Lifestyles

This project is driven by the urgent necessity for a profound shift in lifestyles, particularly in the Global North, to mitigate global warming and restrict it to 1.5°C. Acknowledging the crucial role businesses play in instigating systemic transformations, this initiative focuses on constructing a conceptual framework that delineates three opportunity zones—Policy, Narratives, and Innovation and Design—where businesses can effect meaningful interventions. By amalgamating the Attitude-Facilitators-Infrastructure (AFI) framework with the barriers and enablers of 1.5°C lifestyles, this project aims to articulate specific action domains for businesses to drive the transition to 1.5°C lifestyles, underscoring the significance of a systematic and holistic approach. The framework serves as a roadmap for businesses to contribute substantially to collective efforts aimed at achieving the 1.5°C target.

The work includes the development of the framework together with my research assistant and with the support of other graduate students, finalizing a paper that shares the framework, and presenting my work at the Centre for Sustainable Business at King’s Business School in London.

Rhea Alexander

Closing the gender-gap for women + female-identifying-founders using design strategies

This project aims to investigate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on female-identifying founders access to funding (a subset of entrepreneurs). Through design-led research and analysis, the project will examine how the rapid advancements in AI technology are shaping the entrepreneurial landscape, particularly for women and how design might help to create more pathways for stakeholders to reduce bias and help reduce the gender gap.

The research will draw from a diverse range of sources, including academic literature, industry reports, and qualitative data gathered through interviews and workshops with relevant stakeholders. The findings will contribute to developing a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between AI, gender, and entrepreneurship.

In parallel with the research component, the project will explore the role of strategic design in creating opportunities to reduce the gender gap in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The creative practice will involve the co-creation of design-based interventions and solutions for the various stakeholders that ultimately reduce systemic barriers female-identifying founders face across the entire ecosystem.

Faculty

Title

Description

Carolina Obregon and Lucia Cuba

LATAM Fashion Lab

The continuation of the LATAM Fashion Lab fostering Fashion Systems Latin America and dissiminating these resources and references in the Parsons Community.

The Lab would focus on initiatives that (1) map researchers and designers working in/from fashion systems in countries geopolitically identified within Latin America; (2) generate and disseminate information and knowledge on the issues these practitioners touch upon (in the form of digital and printed publications, as well as a broad range of digital content: visualizations, podcasts, video documentaries, etc.),(3) develop curriculum in the interdisciplinary field of Design, Fashion (4) serve to engage and bring together an international community of practitioners and scholars interested in issues of public health and fashion design, and (5) translate academic knowledge and practice-based experiences into tangible outreach projects and programs to foster practical and theoretical knowledge within Latin American local and global communities. These initiatives will highlight and provide a platform for creativity, innovation, and social engagement in the region. This new platform will offer a fresh perspective on fashion systems in LATAM that have previously been overlooked and disregarded. The development of the lab underscores its commitment to decentralizing the Anglo-Eurocentric view of fashion and promoting the active involvement of communities within the region's fashion system.

The conceptual foundation and knowledge base the second phase aims to generate include (1) launching the website, (2) disseminating information on agents (practitioners, scholars, institutions, and collectives) working at the intersection of design, clothing, technology, and issues of the supply chain allocated in LATAM, and (3) holding public events at Parsons.

Fiona Dieffenbacher

Fashion - Faith: Rituals and Dialogues Exhibition and Symposium

We all wear clothing… We all have rituals…We all are confronted with life’s biggest questions.

These universal statements provide a conceptual framework for this exhibition and related symposium entitled Fashion - Faith: Rituals and Dialogues (FFRD). It seeks to build on themes that emerged from the day-long public event by the same name held at Parsons on March 24th, 2023 comprising a series of conversations led by scholars and faith practitioners from a variety of academic specialties.

NOTE: ‘Faith’ is used here in its broadest sense to include religious traditions as well as a wide variety of spiritual practices and worldviews.

It is important to note the significant work of Professor Reina Lewis from London College of Fashion whose research has been foundational in articulating the discourse around Faith and Fashion. In this context, this exhibition aims to provide a democratized space for dialogue towards the generation of intellectual and creative ideas with a particular emphasis placed on an investigation into what we mean by embodied faith and its relationship to clothing. It seeks to enable visitors to better understand how our embodiment, dress and spiritual practices can generate critical, integrated approaches to fashion, creative making and scholarship contributing to the discourse on dress and identity within the fields of fashion and religious studies.

Given the ability of faith and fashion to shape identity, the exhibition and symposium will ask the following key questions: Does “the fashioned self” resonate with or separate religious views of identity? What are fashion’s rituals and how might these relate to the ritual practices of various worldviews? Can faith traditions be reconciled with the logics and rituals of fashion? What are some of the ways we navigate space and agency through fashion and faith?

James Hamilton Butler and Zoe Vanezis

Working title - branding identities

Funding to help host an interactive web portal acting as an online exhibit or/and interactive space, to feature ongoing collaborations between James Hamilton Butler (PARSONS) and Zoe Vanezis (CSM) centering multi disciplinary outcomes based on branding and its importance in contemporary society. Work will focus initially on deconstructing hierarchical associations with product design, theory and practice.

Laura Lanteri and Khary Simon

The Awakward Pause

We are filming a documentary on the idea and the experience of beauty, its meaning through history, its current dominance, and what we can do as a society to challenge some of its demands. My collaborators are Dr. Sam Mejias (AMT), and Khary Simon (SOF).

The goal of this film is to reclaim some individual and collective freedom around the idea of beauty. In particular, we are striving to uncover the real drivers behind the very human proclivity to desire and to acquire the “beautiful”. Throughout our story, we will be trying to unsettle the notion of beauty from the “outside” and from the “inside”.

On the “outside”, we will be breaking down what forces through history surfaced the current beauty standards. From Aristotle’s writings on symmetry and order, to Plato’s and Heidegger’s considerations about art, we will try to juxtapose and challenge how the dominant cultural interpretation of beauty achieved way more than just popular recognition. Thanks to the work of trailblazing authors like bell hooks, Roxane Gay and Orbach, we will investigate how, ultimately, the idea of beauty became an ideology, dictating what is more desirable, more valuable and more necessary.

On the “inside”, we will be interrogating the psychology and neuroscience of beauty, trying to understand if we are really programmed to like a certain body type, certain facial features and a specific type of symmetry and proportions, or if we have just been very effectively brainwashed.

By challenging the motives of the very architects of beauty narratives and discourses throughout our many shared histories, this documentary aims to shed light on some of our most primal instincts: why we like something, why we are attracted to someone, why we seek dominance, and why beauty is so closely connected to our notion of “worth”.

Liliana Sanguino

Werapara at SQUIFF Fim Festival

"Werapa" is a documentary by filmmaker Claudia Fischer. It features the ongoing collaboration between a community of Colombian Indigenous Embera trans-women with academic Liliana Sanguino and fashion designer Laura Laurens, which is now called Millones de Maneras.

Claudia was invited to join the collaboration at the same moment that we began to encounter obstacles in our bid to fly two of the Trans-women from Colombia to England for IFS in 2019. It appeared a struggle which worth documenting, filming began then in late 2018, Claudia made visits to the women’s home reservation in Antioquia, Karmata Rua and joined us in London and again in Medellin for the Festival de Diversidad.

Claudia’s film work, as part of the collaboration, developed into the documentary, ‘Werapa’ which encompasses the beginnings of the collaboration in 2019, pre-pandemic restrictions, alongside interviews with many of the trans women and photography of Karmata Rua, Antioquia.

The film has been selected to be shown as part Glasgow for SQIFF Scottish Queer International Film Festival (https://www.sqiff.org/ )in October 2024 in partnership with Glasgow School of Arts. This is the first time the documentary will be shown in UK and it seems vital that members of the collective are represented in Glasgow.

Besides the platform to show the work in Glasgow, we are now developing plans to travel this new branch of the collaboration further, with a new project on site “GlasGota” which will see the collaboration exploring relationships between Glasgow and Bogota through textiles. This trip will facilitate an introduction and initial meetings with the textile community in Glasgow.

Faculty

Title

Description

Denise Lim

Excavating Palimpsests in Ponte City

I seek funding to complete a public digital humanities project that deconstructs the spatial, material, and visual history of Ponte City, a 54-story apartment building in Johannesburg, South Africa. Ponte was once an urban space of white privilege, luxury, and global aspirations, but is now considered the city’s most dangerous urban zone. The racial tipping of the inner-city earned Ponte a reputation for housing socially-deviant populations of shifting order. By the 1990s, Ponte’s hollow core was rumored to have housed up to 14 stories of trash. The now absent rubbish piles are still problematically conflated with the figurative “trashiness” of current-day tenants.

When private investors cleared away Ponte’s trash and evicted tenants in 2007, South African artist Mikhael Subotzky and British artist Patrick Waterhouse collaboratively documented the process by photographing the building’s interior and exterior, including every door, window, and television screen. As they collected personal possessions left behind by evicted tenants, digital scans of those objects were juxtaposed with images of abandoned apartments, portraits of residents in defunct elevators, and essays written by experts spanning geology and urban planning. Between 2016 to 2019, I worked with both artists to catalogue and digitize over 800 garbological artifacts from their Ponte City Archive (2008-14). With their permission, I have selected objects from this collection for scholarly investigation in my digital project.

I use architectural, archaeological, and visual analysis to demystify Ponte's reputation and rehabilitate the erased stories of Ponte's diverse community members across space and time. By centering multisensory ways of knowing, my digital project is designed as an immersive platform where end-users can explore 3D renderings of Ponte’s elevators, passageways, staircases, and apartment units to learn about different residents through the spaces they navigated and the objects they owned. My collaborators are two South African designers, Zakiyyah Haffejee and Adam Osman, who have been assisting me in building the website using Cargo, optimizing UX and UI design, as well as creating all interactive visual media. I aim to complete the website by August 31, 2024.

Jilly Traganou

Participation at SAH conference

In April 2024 I will chair the “Fiction, Poetry and Memoir in Architectural (hi)-story telling” session in the Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference in Albuquerque, NM. I am asking for funding for travel expenses and 2 workshops which will be led by a creative writer to help the five session participants with the goal of a future publication.

Allan Doyle

Queer Photography in 1950s US Physique Photography

I seek funding for research travel related to my current research project focusing on gay male bodybuilding photography publications of the post-WWII period. I was recently invited to present my initial findings at the “Intermedial Relations Re-Thinking Photobooks: Media Constellations in Media Constellations,” workshop at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. This ongoing research project will result in a peer-reviewed article that will also serve as the core of the final chapter of my book manuscript, which concerns the afterlife of Michelangelo Buonarroti and the formation of the identity of the modern artist. As historians of queer culture have noted, beginning in the 1950s, there was a dramatic increase in the production and circulation of American physique periodicals featuring photographs of nude or near-nude bodybuilders. To date, scholars have largely considered these publications within a broader context of clandestine gay visual culture in the decades leading up to the legalization of the distribution of gay pornography in the early 1960s. They have, however, not submitted individual examples of book-formatted volumes of this material to close visual analysis. Refusing to view them as generic signposts on the path to a liberated gay press, I take seriously the explicit pedagogic claims made by these volumes to provide models and techniques for aspiring artists. To this end, I place their soliciting of a, still-inchoate, same-sex desire within the prorogation of homoerotic, neoclassical aesthetics found in traditional academic education. The publications I am researching are exceptionally rare, with some only existing in a single extant copy, and usually housed in non-lending institutions throughout the US. I n order to allow me to access these materials, I must travel to Los Angeles, CA, Chicago, Ill, Ithaca, NY, and Louisville, KY, to undertake archival research at the One archive at USC, The GLBT Leather Archives in Chicago, and the special collections divisions of the libraries at Cornell University and the University of Louisville. The funding will be used for flights, accommodations, and incidental expenses.

Mev Luna

Project Title TBD (Cobertizo Residency)

I’ve been invited to participate in Cobertizo’s 1st Residency period of 2024 that will take place from May 7th to June 3rd in Jilotepec, Edo. Mexico. Located an hour and a half from Mexico City, the residency offers a balanced combination of studio work time, partnered with programmed conversations and visit with Mexico-based curators, artists, and members of the Jilotepec community. In addition, because of its proximity to Mexico City and the residency’s access to frequent transportation into the city, I will be able to conduct primary research at the Lecumberri Palace home to the Archivo General de la Nación (General Archive of the Nation) which is housed in a former prison, and at Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo’s (MUAC) extensive artist and film archive.

Ulrich Lehmann

Fashion and Volatility in Capitalist Modernity One-Day-Symposium at The New School, New York Friday, November 10, 2023

Fashion and Volatility in Capitalist Modernity
One-Day-Symposium at The New School, New York
Friday, November 10, 2023

The symposium reflects the unique combination of disciplines at The New School that brings together the humanities, social sciences and the study of design practice. Ideas from economic and social history, anthropology, textile design, and cultural studies are framed by the development of capitalism and the associated concept of volatility, describing changes of intensity in everything from the weather and finance to moods, dispositions and consumer trends. Volatility – the propensity to continually change current states, irrespective of the direction of these changes – is a fitting term to consider the role that fashion has played in the global development and spread of capitalism, differentiations of gender, race and class, and their impact on physical performance and appearance.

The symposium will be an occasion to launch the Cambridge Global History of Fashion, a two-volume survey of the long history of textiles and fashion from the ancient world to the present, which analyses the intensity and rhythm of social, economic and cultural change across different time periods and geographies. Authors of the two-volume survey are paired with diverse makers and thinkers, to discuss the contemporary and historic effects and affects of fashion and volatility within capitalism.

Faculty

Title

Description

Lynn Kiang

The 21st Century Museum

In Spring 2024, I plan to conduct research across the museum field to understand the challenges and opportunities facing art museums today through my creative studio, Dome. We plan to conduct approximately 12 interviews with thought leaders in experience design, technology, provenance, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability to write a comprehensive strategy report on the future of the 21st century museum. This report will be shared with the broader museum community, potentially submitting our paper for consideration at museum conferences. We also plan to also host a summit, gathering these leaders at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, to engage with our findings and reimagine the future of these institutions through facilitated charrette, panel discussion, and presentations. The research funding would help cover the cost for interviewee honorarium, conference proposal fees, and travel expenses for the summit.

Elaine Lopez

The Struggle Is Your Thesis/The Thesis Is Your Struggle Zine

"The Struggle Is Your Thesis/The Thesis Is Your Struggle" is a self-published zine that provides an in-depth, personal narrative. It is based on daily journal entries I maintained during the course of producing my graduate thesis in graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) between 2018 and 2019. This narrative portrays the real, unvarnished experiences of a female, first-generation Cuban-American navigating the challenging experience of pursuing a graduate degree. As detailed in this zine, my journey brings to light the unique challenges I faced studying at an institution where the majority demographic was significantly different from my own background.

The zine touches upon many pertinent issues, ranging from anxiety and mental health struggles, growing apart from friends, understanding complex family dynamics, and diving deep into feminism and geo-political issues. Additionally, it provides insights into the intricate process of creativity.

In its current form, this narrative is available as a link within my thesis PDF on the Digital Commons platform. Remarkably, since the inception of tracking these metrics, my thesis has been downloaded 2,302 times. This makes it the most downloaded thesis at RISD—a testament to its impact. I've received numerous heartfelt messages, predominantly from women of color, expressing how this journal resonated with their own experiences and helped them feel less isolated in their struggles through academia. However, due to recent changes in Google's storage policies, the link to this narrative from the Digital Commons is no longer functional. This has limited the accessibility of this piece. I am turning it into a physical publication to ensure its continued reach and longevity.

I want to pursue Riso printing to create this project, a medium that aligns with my design practice. This affordable and aesthetically unique production method will make the piece visually appealing through colored inks, paper, and binding processes. Producing this piece using my own Riso printer ensures I have complete control and ownership over the creation of this zine. Still, because Riso printing is such a labor-intensive process, it is best to initially create as many as possible. Having additional financial support to produce this piece will allow me to make more copies to expand its reach. The zine will be distributed at book fairs and through Draw Down Books, a bookstore with a broad reach whom I have previously worked with. They are eager to share the publication in their upcoming book fairs—specifically the New York Art Book Fair this Spring.

I aspire for this work to tell my story and help scholars who feel marginalized. Eventually, it will find its place in the rich history of self-published works by women.

Isaiah Winters

This Land is Your Land

This Land Is Your Land is an interdisciplinary project and future photo book that explores the history of the U.S. National Park system and the lands upon which they have been created. The work is an examination of recreation upon and the seizure of ancestral Indigenous lands from the perspective of a Black veteran. I’m asking for funding to help me begin organizing and devoting my practice back towards the research elements and travel portions of the project. The project is a combination of found photographs/video, collage, and archival material - it has also been exhibited in the US and abroad. In order to create this work, I’ve had to spend the last few years flying all over the United States to collaborate with activists, scholars and park historians.

TLIYL encourages viewers to parse through contrasting materials that paint this area of northern Montana as both intrinsically “American” and intrinsically stolen and Indigenous. Viewers will be encouraged to reconcile their own ideas and emotions regarding American mysticism and the colonialism that permeates all facets of our culture, even those as remote and “untouched” as rural Montana.

With additional funding I’d have the opportunity to travel back to some of the parks that created the foundation for this TLIYL. Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park and Yosemite National Park in California would be key locations for research and collaboration with some of my contacts who work in the historical archives. In the past, I’ve funded short trips on a fairly sporadic basis depending on the level of external/personal funding I was able to put together. Assistance from the university also opens up the ability for me to work with some of the collaborators I have listed within my application.

In many cases the documents, photographs and archival motion picture footage that I need to continue working have not been digitized by the US Department of the Interior or National Park Service. Individual parks also rely on conservancies, outside funding and philanthropic initiatives in order to be able to sort through all of this material. I was fortunate in the past the Glacier National Park in particular has a digital counterpart via the Montana Memory Project. This is the work of a very limited staff who is slowly combing through park materials and making them accessible to the public via a website. I’d like to work at the other parks mentioned in order to begin the process of getting these materials digitized and sourced for my further research and book.

There are quite a few discrepancies I’ve come across when it comes to researching the demographics of park visitors. Recent articles and admissions by the National Park Service themselves have shown that there is a serious problem with diversity in these parks with some numbers being as low as 2% of annual visitors for African Americans. People of color tend to have no experience or much less exposure to the National Parks for example. With segregation not truly coming to them until the 70s and many locations still being associated with enslaved peoples or displaced tribes/confederacies - there is a lot to unpack there. While my travel to these locations is paramount - I’d also like to divert funds to allow me to spend time in DC interviewing and working with researchers at the Dept of Interior and National Park Service Headquarters. The dangerous histories of rural areas and deserted lands in the United States plays a big role but I’d like to break down some of these numbers from a less anecdotal perspective.

Melanie Crean

LRRH

LRRH will be a 5 day workshop & cooperative video event exploring the nature of bodily autonomy, consent, school policies related to sexuality & gender as a reflection of cultural debate, and the power of narrative. Women and non-binary workshop participants will represent a range of ages, backgrounds and specialties relating to "consentful tech," sexual health & advocacy, sex education, and artists working with issues of gender, transformation and identity. I am hoping to bring together a group of people interested to discuss our role as artists and educators in this phenomena, analyze current messaging in our educational spaces, and experiment with counter-messaging.

Day 1: The 1st day of workshops will concern relating national issues affecting bodily autonomy, to issues in NYC and The New School, and stories from attendees' personal experience. National issues might include: the loss of Roe v. Wade, Florida's Don't Say Gay laws, and book bans censoring a range of sexual identities. Local issues both negative and positive might include the NY Civil Liberties Union reporting on the failure of many NYC schools to teach sex ed, along side TNS students self-organizing to form SexE, a peer to peer education and support group promoting sexual health and empowerment.

Day 2: Using a combination of written prompts and silent embodied performance methods, participants will translate their experiences into 3 sequential, silent-performance tableau.

Days 3 - 4: Will involve siting and videoing the performances.

Day 5: Will involve viewing the work, and depending on content and form, planning if / how it might be used to advocate for work of the individual participants, locally and at The New School.

Arthur Ou

Cross-Strait Relations

This past spring I was invited to produce a solo show for the Up Gallery in Hsinchu, Taiwan, in March of 2024. Even though I have never worked with this gallery before, I have followed its programming as it is the only space in the country with a unique focus on contemporary photography. Over the past year I have been experimenting with the photogrammetry process to three-dimensionally scan water in order to use this process as a means of producing "landscape" photographs of the sea—challenging the established conventions of landscape photographs. For this exhibition I aim to make a series of scanned seascapes of the eastern coast of Taiwan—the short expanse of the sea between mainland China and the island of Taiwan that make up the Taiwan Strait—using this scanning process to render the surface textures of this contested body of water with a conscious intent to address the rising political tension between the two lands.

I have already secured a production grant from the Taiwan National Culture and Arts Foundation to produce the large scale prints as well as funds to cover my travel to Taiwan to install the March 2024 show. Because I will be a participating artist in the upcoming Taipei Biennial exhibition in Taiwan, slated to open in November, 2023, I plan to take advantage of this trip and to carry out this proposed endeavor (across 3 days) after I am done with installing the work for the Biennial. This application specifically seeks funding to help purchase a portable hand-held 3D scanner, as well as funds to charter a small boat to facilitate scanning in open waters.

Colleen Macklin

Game Developer's Conference 2023

I have been invited to present at the annual Game Developer's Conference, on a panel of game design educators and am submitting another talk proposal with my colleague John Sharp. The reason I am seeking funding beyond my Faculty Research Funds is because those funds have been fully spent (presenting at a The Visual Science of Art Conference in Cyprus with NSSR faculty member Benjamin Van Buren this August - https://www.vsac2023.eu/program/saturday-26th/)

The Game Developers Conference is the preeminent conference in my field, taking place in San Francisco, CA. The panel I have been invited to is "Lightening Talks from Luminaries" moderated by Lindsay Grace as part of the Education Summit. The session aligns with my interests in teaching game design with an emphasis on ethical, inclusive and socially-just approaches to game making.

In addition to this session, fellow Parsons faculty member John Sharp and I have submitted a proposal to speak about our experience in teaching Game Studies via a flipped classroom model. In this talk, we will share how we develop a syllabus based on student interests, and how we have looked beyond the “canon” of Game Studies to bring in more international and intersectional readings and examples.

Ben Katchor

New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium

This is the 12th year of an ongoing weekly lecture series for artist/writers working in various text-image forms: comics, picture-stories, animation, etc. at which to present and critique current work open to students and the public. Participants are practitioners, critics and historians from around the world. Lectures and follow-up discussions consider new models for the sustainable creation and distribution of text-image work. The Symposium offers an ongoing place to learn and think about the traditions and future of text-image work. Thousands of viewers participate through live in-person events and videos posted online. https://nycomicssymposium.wordpress.com.

Freya Powell

Notes on Voice: Echo and Narcissus

‘Notes on Voice: Echo and Narcissus’ focuses on the political potential of the voice, particularly within a chorus. In utilizing the voice as a medium, I am asking the questions: Can the voice illicit empathy? Can the voice, beyond a conveyance of language, access a human experience? And, ultimately can the voice be harnessed as a political tool?

I will be looking to the classic story of Echo as a reference. Drawing connections between the sonic occurrence of echo and the mountain nymph Echo, sentenced to repeat others' words, I will collaborate with a chorus and a soprano singer and use artificial intelligence software for voice generation, to explore the auditory phenomenonBoth Echo and Narcissus are seen as figures of reflection. Narcissus for looking and Echo for repeating. Echo’s is the selective reflection of other’s words while Narcissus is more self-oriented – doomed to gaze at his own reflection. I will write a script that ties together artificial intelligence as an echo of human presence and humankind as Narcissus, so self-obsessed that he fell in love with his own reflection – though in this case it will be the reflection of voice.

I will dive-deeper into applied and material research on the potential for the voice to elicit empathy and through experiments with artificial intelligence software attempt to determine if these affective capacities are also possible with a generated voice. This focused research will inform a sound project. I will produce a duet between a soprano singer and an AI generated voice to see if the artificial voice has the capability of evoking the same empathetic feelings.

Shana Agid

Here's What Happened in the Library Today

As books and the libraries that hold them - in schools, small towns, or big cities – are attacked and defunded, the work they do becomes plain. Books change people. Libraries are spaces for the public. I will work with Emily Drabinski, 2023-24 President of the American Library Association (ALA), to create “Here’s what happened at the library today,” a pocket-sized book with perforated pages made to be torn out and shared. It will include stories from librarians around the US about efforts to shut down their work, spaces, and lending capacities - banned books and threats to access - and stories about libraries as community hubs where every-day needs are met - whether saving lives by having Narcan on hand or hosting queer kids’ reading groups. The book will also include organizing strategies and will be a tool for mobilization with information about what you can do where you are on every tear-out page.

Building on contemporary histories of efforts to monitor and constrain librarians’ and library users’ activities, the title of the project refers to librarians’ communication strategies taken up after the Patriot Act to subvert its restrictions on talking about data requests from the federal government to libraries about users' borrowing histories. This tear-off book highlights links between anti-BIPOC, anti-LBGTQ+, and other book banning / burning and efforts to control libraries and book access across the country. It will circulate through a planned 2024 ALA bus tour supporting efforts to sustain libraries, resist bans, and make connections between attacks on libraries and attacks on people’s full lives, while organizing for both.

Gyun Hur

Our mothers, our water, our peace

"Our mothers, our water, our peace" reflects the resilience and love of Atlanta’s Asian Communities. In response to Asian hate crimes that escalated during the pandemic followed by the 2021 Atlanta Spa Shootings, this project illuminates testimony of the irreversible changes that have taken place in our identities and the stories we tell ourselves.

A constellation of 150 glass vessels will be housed amongst the Atlanta Asian community. This array of installations will act as poetic nodes that map gestures of grief in both public and private spaces. The glass vessels will become conduits of mourning in communal expressions and honored in the intimacy of home. These hand-blown tear-shaped vessels will hold local creek and river water from the Atlanta region and seed conversations around intergenerational work, healing, and community engagement through a series of workshops and gatherings.

Our mothers, our water, our peace is commissioned by Flux Projects. The following are confirmed collaborating organizations and advisory boards: Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, Asian American Advocacy Fund, Asian Student Alliance, East x Southeast, Lisa Kim (Gallery Director, Ford Foundation), Bora Kim (Program Director, Artadia), and Le’Andra LeSeur (Artist).

Nika Simovich Fisher

How Technology is Impacting Serbian Orthodoxy Research Trip

I'm proposing a research trip to Serbia to investigate the how technology is impacting spiritual practices. This exploration is anchored in two case studies: the use of AI-generated content by religious institutions for viral engagement, and the emergence of digital platforms as modern arenas for religious community building and matchmaking within the Serbian Orthodox community. I’m also interested in exploring adjacent religions, such as Vlach magic spirituality, which is rooted in Orthodox beliefs and demonstrated with pagan rituals.

The first case study centers on the Tuman Monastery's alleged use of AI to create viral religious avatars, weaving a complex narrative around technology's exploitation of faith and the ethical considerations therein. The monastery, which is famed for its miracles, has a wild online presence that ranges from miracle confessional videos, and a YouTube account that highlights AI-generated avatars with chain-language style language, seemingly trained on the confessional videos. I believe that a priest turned “Ethno-Punk” content creator, Ivan Cvetković, is behind this content, and I’m curious about the connection between Cvetković’s influencer goals and the ethics behind creating viral content connected to a real religious institution, and I intend to explore who is being most impacted by this content by interviewing him and the people at the monastery.

The second case study focuses on Teodul, a historical project meant to preserve Serbian heritage and diaspora that is most evident on a dating community hosted on Viber, a Japanese text messaging application. The dating group is hosted between two group chats — one for women to list themselves and one for men. The chatrooms are customized with a heart patterned wallpaper. Women are instructed to “present themselves” with an extensive personal description and what they’re searching for. Men are not allowed to post — though some do, before they’re swiftly booted and their posts erased — but are encouraged to privately message the women once they announce themselves. The rules also indicate that the announcements are open from 10am to 10pm, though nothing seems to go dark in off times. I intend to meet with Teodul users in real life, and explore how the nation’s growing religiosity impacts gender roles and expectations in relationships.

This grant will support the journey to Serbia, enabling local research, interviews, and on-ground investigation into these digital-religious practices. The objective is to produce comprehensive journalistic content that sheds light on Serbia's unique digital-religious landscape, contributing to broader discussions on technology's role in evolving spiritual practices and community dynamics. Through this work, I intend to highlight Serbian digital culture and how that gets mixed in to changing politics and the religious climate. I’d like to turn this research into a book or published series of essays.

Richard The

Interrogating AI

"Interrogating AI" is a film investigating different perspectives on AI and it's impact on labor, equality, justice and race. It consists of quotes from people across the ideological spectrum, ranging from techno-utopians and creators of AI to critics and activists. The quotes are rendered typographically using generative AI image generation. As words are spoken they appear in written form, but rendered from photographic references that are at times visually coherent with the spoken quote and sometimes contrast it purposely. By using contemporary image-generating AI system to create this film, it speaks in "the language of AI" while also unearthing issues with these systems around inherent bias, representation and copyright.
The objective of this project is to raise awareness on AI and it's impact in a visually compelling, clearly communicating way that speaks to AI practitioners, critics and general audiences.

I have explored this project in software and film prototypes during my sabbatical together with two research assistants for the last couple of months and this support would help me developing it further.

Pascal Glissmann

Library of Speculative Language

Your answerLanguages—our instruments to understand the world and discuss ways of seeing it—are not static but constantly evolving systems. We shape our languages, and they shape us. New realities are captured as new terminologies or entirely new systems. These constant inventions of new codes are even more critical in a world increasingly exploring more-than-human and interspecies communication. Without such a code, we face the potential loss of access.

An example of such a "lost code" is the Phaistos Disc, unearthed in 1908 in Greece, continuing to fascinate researchers with its cryptic symbols. It has sparked various theories regarding its meaning, ranging from a prayer to a goddess, an astronomical map, to a musical notation. Housed in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, it remains a subject of speculation and discussion—and might be a simple hoax. We know that the disc, crafted from fired clay, bears forty-five symbols depicting everyday things.

Inspired by this unresolved code of forty-five symbols on the Phaistos Disc, my collaborators (Oliver Arcioli & Andreas Henrich) and I invited artists and designers worldwide to translate current political, economic, ecological, cultural, or social concerns into systems of forty-five distinct visual elements—speculative languages representing the past, present, or future. Work has been produced through workshops, university courses, and open submission calls. This proposal seeks support during a pivotal moment: gathering, curating, and disseminating existing work while also launching a new digital library.

In collaboration with the authors, we plan to translate a selection of these speculative languages into functional typefaces. By "hacking" the concept and the technology of a "font," we aim to enable a broad audience—anyone with access to a basic word processor—to engage with the library, cultivate imaginative uses for the specimens, and disseminate their outcomes via social media and an exhibition.

Harpreet Sareen

Algaphon

One of the biggest challenges of our time is for humans to really understand how does a human action propagate through another complex natural system? What is the difference between human and ecological time? Algaphon is an online and offline installation wherein algae bubbles that ring at minnaert frequency near algal filaments are rendered audible through a hydrophone.

This project is a hybrid installation wherein algae bubbles that ring at minnaert frequency near algal filaments are rendered audible through a hydrophone. In addition to the installation that visitors can see physically, I will connect the aquarium at to an online web interface. This interface will allows visitors to interact with algae and provide their input. The visitors record an audio response, that is converted into light parameters that propagates through algae to produce bubbling events. These bubbling events are on a different timescale (3 sec in human time, 45min in algae time) than from the initial visitor input. These acoustic responses from algae are recorded and sent to visitors, with the asynchronous nature of these responses highlighting the biological media.

This installation will comprise of aquariums in New York and LA (through partners) each with different species of algae. Our setup during festival at USC Cinermatic Arts will comprise of an aquarium (20 gallon capacity), programmable LED lighting (5500k, 80-100W) mounted at a distance of 10-12” from the water surface and macroalgae species in the water. When the light is turned on, algae photosynthesis produces oxygen that gets dissolved in water. After 2-3 hours of light being turned on, dissolved oxygen levels reach a threshold following which algae starts producing bubbles as a result of local supersaturation of oxygen in water.

Audience will be invited online and offline (in New York and LA) to record their audio messages during a major art festival. These visitor audio messages are converted to light variation scenes and played over active aquarium. Bubble variations occur as a result of PAR variations over an aquarium. The algae audio bubbling response, recorded via hydrophones, will be live streamed on our website during the full duration of the exhibition. Each algae response, occurring as a result of user input, is saved locally (~45min audio/visitor input) and also sped up to a min long audio. Because of the queued nature of responses and long response duration, the visitors do not hear an immediate response. The audio response is sent in two modes, in algae time (~45min) as well as in compressed time (~1min), over email.

When the user receives the response, the note also invites them to think of the difference between human action and ecological reaction time difference, as well as to think of time scale between humans and non-humans.

Faculty

Title

Description

David Leven

City of Trees Exhibition

Funding is requested for materials relating to the production of an exhibition for the project called City of Trees that was the theoretical underpinning for “House of Trees” a full size pavilion at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. The Faye Jones School of Architecture, in Fayetteville, Arkansas has invited LEVENBETTS to produce materials and exhibit City of Trees. The exhibition materials will be drawings and models of the proposed urban plan and housing prototype.

City of Trees is a holistic neighborhood proposal that offers innovative ways to address the housing crisis in the rapidly gentrifying Northwest Arkansas, an area exhibiting social, housing, and urbanization stresses pressing in many small-tier American cities. The project reinvents restrictive zoning practices to create new opportunities for higher housing density and greatly improved social spaces. A patchwork infill approach honors and enhances the existing neighborhood fabric. Advocating for combining available lots within the urban boundary, the proposal offers smart urbanization that prevent displacement of long time residents and agricultural and forest lands while meeting the growing housing needs of the region.

City of Trees embeds a carbon sequestering mass timber prototype at its core. The project celebrates and protects urban nature, mitigating heat island affect through the preservation and inclusion of trees in and on the prototype. It is conceived to be built at scale to increase efficiency, house more people and reduce fuel usage in its construction. The prototype is passively cooled and uses only health materials. City of Trees protects neighborhoods from gentrification and celebrates alternative groupings of people through the architecture of the prototype. Participants on the project will be Parsons students hired to produce the project and LEVNEBETTS staff as needed. The objective is a clear, beautifully produced exhibition of this work.

Alison Mears

Elder Housing

Elder Housing on the White Earth Reservation, MN with Honor The Earth MN, EarthBound Building, MD Homeland Hempcrete, ND, to develop and build prototypical hemplime housing for local Elders.

Nadia Elrokhsy

IDEC Regional East 2023

An area of my research and scholarship is uncovering hidden narratives of the museum Period Room typology. I have used the Period Rooms to highlight historical contexts for living life with less resource consumption—concepts we might leverage today. Furthermore, it is content I leverage to bridge issues of ecological studies to the field of interior design in my RSCP. These interiorscapes, as I call them, provide a site/context for studying human practices, histories, and theories as well as exhibition design in a non-linear or chronological way. However, typically, their curation and representation narrowly engage the viewer and are assembled collections of incomplete histories. There are recent examples that hint at how the sites of intersectionality can be curated to be more inclusive in their storytelling.

In April of 2023, I submitted a proposal to present my initial research on this topic and expand by organizing and moderating a panel event for the 2023 Fall Regional IDEC (Interior Design Educators Council) Conference, Making Interiors, in Boston, MA. My proposal was accepted, and I will present on October 5, 2023. Adegboyega Adefope, Assistant Professor of Interior Design, is co-organizer of the panel event, and I invited him to be a panelist. Other panelists include my research assistant Elizabeth Watkins, History of Design and Curatorial Studies at Parsons, Sylvia Mead, principal of Wow VR Services, an immersive exhibition design firm, and Maya Georgieva, faculty and Senior Director of The New School’s Innovation Center.

Therefore, funding is sought to cover my expenses to attend the IDEC Regional Conference.

Cotter Christian

Exploring Contemplative Sacred Space: An Immersive Documentation of the Baha'i Temple in Santiago

My sabbatical research trip to Santiago, Chile, in Spring of 2024 aligns with my ongoing exploration of contemplative practice and sacred spaces. I have been researching the intersections among contemplative practice, design, and pedagogy since 2017, which has resulted in several conference presentations, journal articles, faculty development workshops, the launch of a new graduate minor, and two electives on the topic. This endeavor aligns with my continuing research on the profound impact of design on spirituality and human experience while promoting a pedagogy that encourages whole-person growth and development.

The primary goal of this trip is to conduct in-depth research at the Bahai Temple in Santiago, Chile, a remarkable example of sacred space completed in 2018. This temple is the last of the continental temples and a significant milestone for this community. I plan to closely examine architectural elements that foster contemplation and spirituality at the site. Employing 360-degree cameras, I will capture immersive images and videos, creating a virtual reality (VR) experience to examine how others might experience this contemplative, sacred space from afar. I am curious to learn how VR can be used to support contemplative practice by experiencing sacred sites.

My commitment to advancing the understanding of contemplative design extends beyond Santiago. In June 2024, I will travel to Haifa, Israel, to visit the Bahai Center and other sacred architectural sites. There, I will continue my 360-degree documentation, broadening the immersive experience. My overarching goal is to make these profound spaces accessible to a wider audience through immersive VR technology and see how that experience positively impacts viewers.

This research endeavor – a combination of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and personal research – not only deepens our comprehension of the interplay between design, spirituality, and human experience but also addresses the need to build more opportunities for contemplative design into design education. Contemplative practice and pedagogy encourages an awareness of interconnectedness, which has been shown to have pro-social and pro-environmental impacts. Ultimately, this project aims to provide an innovative means for individuals to immerse themselves in these sacred spaces, fostering a deeper connection with contemplative practice and design.

Michele Gorman, Jolanda Morkel, Hermie Delport (University of Cape Town)

Relearning Design Practices for Earth Day 2024

The aim of this project is to gain critical reflection of our design practices and materiality – and how we integrate decolonization practices and bring awareness to pre-existing colonization underpinnings in our respective disciplines. This survey of decolonization to further raise awareness around the subject of colonization will be done through an event bringing together projects from SCE during Earth Day at Governor’s island. We propose to bring together the surveyed work as a way of understanding how we are practicing, how we are teaching, and how we can continue to evolve our practices in the context of our respective fields of design, that are often historically colonized. As thought leaders in our individual disciplines we would like to engage in a cross disciplinary, thought provoking conversation. The research and critical insights will be published there by disseminating the outcomes as a way of starting the conversation with the community at large.

Jonsara Ruth

Healthy Materials for Affordable Housing in Memphis Tennessee

Climate change, environmental injustices, toxic chemical pollution, loss of biodiversity, environmental degradation - the multitude of crises of our time are intertwined with our discipline of design.

The design and construction industry that provides affordable housing plays a critical role in the declining health of citizens, our ecosystem, and global warming. When decision-makers are empowered with knowledge about better choices of materials and construction methods, they can contribute to slowing climate change, dramatically reducing toxic pollution, and improving the health of communities.

Seemingly simple choices, like the selection of building products and methods of construction of homes, can contribute to creating healthier lives of all people - from people who live in the homes to people who work in factories that make the materials, to people who live near manufacturing plants.

In our work at Healthy Materials Lab we provide accessible resources to architects and designers so that they can put human health and environmental health at the center of all design decisions. We create education and resources for designers, architects, and other professionals who build homes. Critical to our research and knowledge of the topic are collaborations with community organizations to implement these ideas in affordable homes.

In Summer of 2023, an owner of a small black-owned construction company in Memphis, Tennessee contacted us to ask about collaborating with us on the building of a new pilot project there - a healthy, affordable home for low-middle income working class families. As our conversation developed, an additional opportunity developed to work with a local non-profit called CRA- Community Redevelopment Agency - which works to provide residents in Memphis with safe, healthy, affordable housing. While they are engaged in impressive work to revitalize communities, they were not aware of the impact that some conventional building materials can have on people's health.

We are in the initial stages of putting together a partnership agreement so that our team at Parsons Healthy Materials Lab can begin working with these groups so that their housing will indeed be “healthy” affordable housing. The project will commence this fall. A fundamental objective of these collaborations is for us to learn more about the context, specific culture, climate and landscape surrounding the building project. An added benefit to our research and to the collaboration would be to travel to the site a few times during the process of design and construction. We would very much like to meet our collaborators in person, to learn more about the specific context and culture of Memphis, and to document the process.

Yvette Chaparro

Prototypes for Phd Research project

My main RSCP is my PhD by practice research project “Towards an Understanding the Programme in Industrial Design: Developing a new pedagogical methodology through action research”.

I am starting the fourth year of my PhD in October 2023, the phase I am on right now includes the development of a few collections of products of industrial design to be used as examples of my proposal through practice.
This application for school-based funds is to aid on the prototyping of a few pieces.

Brian McGrath

The Territory as Living Subject (conference)

Funding is sought for a conference I will co-host with Visiting Scholar Noélie Lecoanet from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne entitled:

The Territory as Living Subject

The conference, tied to the NAAB revised curriculum of urban studio (Design Studio 4) in the graduate architecture program will introduce the concept of the territory, region, or biome as a living subject. The framework is based on Visiting Scholar Noélie Lecoanet's PhD research on community engagement for climate and biodiversity planning for the Paris and Geneva regions, applied to New York City. The intention of this conference is to introduce new ways of thinking about the New York City territory. Most people are unaware that New York City is part of a glacial formed landscape with a terminal moraine defining distinct stratifications of access to natural resources in addition to uneven climate risks. The conference will feature new interdisciplinary conversations with Dr. Steward Pickett of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies on racialized segregation is an ecological factor based on spatial history and politics. The conference will take place as part of Design Studio 4 in order for students to understand the New York Region's history of environmental (in)justice.

Carly Cannell

WHEN PLACES SPEAK

WHEN PLACES SPEAK is a global photography exhibit that provides a voice to physical places associated with sex trafficking. Narratives emerge from places where traffickers recruit victims, places used by purchasers, places used by law enforcement to stop trafficking, and places where survivors can receive justice and healing. By illuminating the physical places where sex trafficking occurs, we hope to reveal that this issue is not distant or abstract but that it is happening here, in our neighborhoods and communities.

The exhibit's New York City edition will unveil the hidden yet visible facets of sex trafficking across all boroughs. By exposing a range of sites—from recruitment hotspots, transit routes used for moving victims, to locales of illicit activities and recovery spaces for survivors—we aim to reveal the extent of trafficking within familiar settings. The exhibition employs a rich, multi-sensory experience through soundscapes, videos, and photographs, inviting visitors into the reality of these spaces to foster empathy, awareness, and action.


The first public introduction to the project will take place March 5-15th at the Parsons 2 W 13th Street lobby windows to align with the IDEC National Conference taking place in NYC March 6-9th, where I will also be also be participating on a panel discussion “Spearheading Faculty Collaborations – Interior design and the fight against sexual exploitation”. An extended showcase is planned during the NYCxDesign festival in May to broaden our reach further, appealing to local, national, and international visitors. Following this, the Kellen Gallery will host our exhibition in the summer of 2024, continuing the conversation.


This project is a collaborative endeavor, drawing on the talents of students and faculty at Parsons and The New School through research, site visits, and creative expression. This exhibit, while unique in its focus and execution, builds upon a legacy of similar exhibitions around the world, leveraging an existing infrastructure for dissemination.

Daniel Michalik

“Glass Paddles”: Objects for Paraphernalia Exhibition during NYCXDesign 2024

‘Glass Paddles' is a collection of objects to be exhibited at an upcoming exhibition during NYCXDesign. Titled “Paraphernalia”, this invitational exhibition presents a broad brief, inviting designers to interpret its titular theme “In many directions, from historical, cultural or technical specificity”. The exhibition will be on display at a gallery space on East 9th street from 20 - 23 May, with a press preview on 20 May. 14 designers will be exhibiting, including Parsons SCE faculty and alumni.

I am developing a collection of handheld cork tools that will form hot glass in the creation of new objects whose form reflects the use of these bespoke tools.

While I have long been aware of the use of cork tools in the craft of hot glass forming, I have never made one. The unique technical capacities of cork present an opportunity to develop tools that transcend the role of supporting actors in the craft of forming glass, and a more symbiotic relationship between tool and object will emerge.

The cork tools will be 3-dimensional objects, made in my studio and with local CNC partners, and will exist as collectible objects in their own right. Brooklyn-based glass artist Emrys Berkower (tokenlights.com) will use these tools in the creation of a collection of glass objects, whose form will be based around the unique profiles of each tool.

Standard cork paddles for hot glass forming are flat surfaces with wooden handles used to create curved forms in glass. The tools I am designing will have specialized forms milled into the cork surface that will create corresponding impressions, negative shapes and other effects into the glass forms they come in contact with. The cork tools will form the glass, and the hot glass will burn and change the shape of the cork tools themselves.

A mutually reflective set of objects will result, to be exhibited together, integrating tools with forms and objects with process.

Faculty

Title

Description

Hala A Malak

La Science: Challenging Dominant Knowledge Narratives for Social Transformation

The colonial project is built on the violent exclusion and disenfranchisement of indigenous peoples. Notably, this involves the marginalization of traditional forms of knowledge, limiting how these understandings might contribute to collective imaginaries. In spite of this, these ways of knowing and forms of wisdom have survived.
My research begins with the premise that collective wisdom, ancestral ways of knowing, and traditional earth-based healing processes, are central in the emergence of new and just imaginaries and are integral for social transformation. I argue that creative practitioners and scholars concerned with social and ecological change have a
responsibility to become literate in traditional and indigenous knowledges (TK).

This ongoing investigation is an inquiry into knowledge production and the potential of collective fabulation as a world-building practice. The work engages art, storytelling, design, and experimental ethnographic practices, asking challenging questions about how knowledge is transmitted and the futures it shapes. What gets told, written, recorded, archived, adopted, believed?
Through a participatory and transdisciplinary lens attuned to the traditional and living importance of TK, my project asks: What role can collective wisdom play in imagining more inclusive and equitable futures? How might we reconnect with subjugated, forgotten and indigenous forms of knowledge? How might we reimagine, reintegrate
and make space for stories that have been maligned and marginalized? Keeping in mind the ways in which indigenous knowledge is increasingly viewed as a commodity that can be extracted, transferred, used, integrated, and even patented, my research reckons with issues related to consent and shared opportunity.

Barbara Adams

Displacement, Belonging, and Mutual Aid (working title)

This is a multi-pronged research project that builds on work started in 2020 focused on displacement. This includes continued collaboration with UNHCR and UN Global Pulse using speculative approaches to reimagine humanitarian response and futures it shapes. Thus far, this work has resulted in a course co-taught with UNHCR staff, an exhibition with programming, conference presentations, webinars, and the book Project Unsung.

This work now continues with research on displacement in both Port Bou, Spain and in Lebanon. Current research on the Spain-France border traces the trail Lisa and Hans Fittko established as an escape route from Nazi-occupied France. Last summer I walked the trail, and I am now creating a series of interventions that include a short film and signage. This is being done in conjunction with the Port Bou-based organization, Alarm Phone, with whom I am currently conducting ethnographic fieldwork. This volunteer organization hosts a self-organized hotline for refugees that amplifies SOS calls, placing pressure on rescue entities in the Aegean and the Mediterranean Seas.

The third component of the project involves work with collaborators in Lebanon (the Center for Civic Engagement and Community Service at the American University of Beirut, Aammiq Wetland, Ghata schools for tented settlements, Lebanon Mountain Trail Association, UN and EU entities, and various arts and cultural organizations), and focuses on building sustainable relationships between community organizers, creative practitioners, social researchers, and others. The objective of the project is to explore how the notion of “home” functions as a repository for complex, interrelated, and, at times, contradictory socio-cultural ideas about people’s relationships with one another, with place, and with the land. This builds on initial research conducted in June 2023, that involved site visits, interviews, conversations, walks, and other engagements. Lebanon hosts the highest per capita of refugees in the world, following a complete collapse of the government, economic and banking systems, the healthcare system, and many other public and private institutions that normally provide social support.

Rhea Alexander

AI : Friend or Foe for Female-Identifying Founders?

According to the FemaleFounderFund 2022 review, funding for female-led companies declined from 2.4% to 2.1% in 2022, representing a stark gap in financing between female-identifying founders (FIF) and their counterparts.

Add to this the rapid adoption of underdeveloped/tested generative AI tools, which are increasingly used in various industries, including the startup sector, to conduct research, assess startups' potential, generate images, text, and other content. There is potential to impact this already bleak outlook negatively. Because these tools have been found to perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and biases. This research proposal investigates how current biases in generative AI tools impact female-identifying founders (FIF) in New York City (NYC), a top global ecosystem for startups.

The design and research for this project will involve local stakeholders within the ecosystem who have used or are considering using AI tools in either building their businesses, such as founders, or for assessing startups, such as investors like venture capital firms and financial institutions, supporters like incubators, as well as local government offices like the SBA and chamber of commerce who control, deploy funding, mentor, and make policy that can help or hinder FIF. The sample will be selected focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Our objective is to assess the current state of AI use in the entrepreneurial system by identifying practices that support or create barriers to meeting the needs of FIF in NYC, which include finding funding, access to training, mentoring, workspace, and tools used, and identify pathways forward that reduce the gender gaps and promote parity.

To accomplish this, we will (1) Explore the experiences of FIF and other entrepreneurial system stakeholders by using or considering generative AI tools.
Identify the types of generative AI tools used in the sector. (2) Assess the extent to which these tools perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and biases and how these biases impact FIF and the entrepreneurial ecosystem in NYC at large. (3) Provide innovative and design-informed recommendations that mitigate biases and promote gender equity within NYC startups and the ecosystem surrounding them.

The study will use a mixed-methods and design research approach, including qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. We will collect data through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and workshops with sector stakeholders and FIF. The study will also analyze existing data sources in the ecosystem. The study is expected to provide insights into the impact of biases in generative AI tools on female-identifying founders in NYC and pathways forward for promoting DEI and reducing the gender gap in the surrounding startup ecosystem that perpetuates inequalities in our societal structures. The study's findings may be used to inform policy and practice related to the use of generative AI tools in startups and their ecosystems, as well as help to develop systems, methods, and support tools that reduce the biases and help to shrink the said gender gap.

Miodrag Mitrasinovic

Corona Plaza: Creating a Dignified Public Space for Immigrant Communities

The proposed project will focus on Corona, Queens: its history, its strong immigrant character, its social infrastructures and social capital, its religious geographies, community-based organizations, the civil society sector, and also the role Queens Museum has played in strengthening its diverse cultures. It will also focus on the process of creation of Corona Plaza, from early conceptualizations to its construction, and to ongoing transformations the plaza has catalyzed in the community.

Corona Plaza, as a “dignified public space for immigrants,” was created under the auspices of the NYC DOT’s Plaza Program during a tend year period (2008-2018). It represents the only true public space for immigrant communities between Jackson Heights and Flushing, Queens, and has recently been called “the center of Latinae cultures” in New York City.

The first part of this project --research, interviews, and creation of the video documentary -- was supported by the Zolberg Institute grant and previously by the School-based funds. That part of the project is nearing completion, and the funds have been exhausted.

The second aspect of this project is to organize an exhibition of the documentary film, drawings and maps, at Queens Museum as part of their community-centered public programs. I also plan to convene a gathering of all the protagonists in the creation of Corona Plaza as a component of the exhibition for a public event to be held at Parsons in spring 2024. I have already made arrangements with the main protagonists of the Corona Plaza project, such as Queens Museum director at the time, Mr. Tom Finkelpearl, community organizers, local CBO leaders, and others.

Raz Godelnik

Design for 1.5C lifestyles - integrating individual agency and systemic changes

There is a growing body of research showcasing the need for substantial lifestyle changes, not just energy transition, to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. The failure of the supply-side strategy, focusing mainly on energy transition, to achieve substantial progress towards the 1.5C target emphasizes the inescapable truth: We must transform our lifestyles to align with the 1.5C target. While we are already aware of what needs to be done, the challenge lies in determining how to effectively implement these changes. It is now time to embrace the ultimate endeavor: Designing for 1.5C lifestyles.

With estimates suggesting that emissions in high-income countries will need to be reduced by 91-95% by 2050, there is an urgent need to better understand what this shift to low-carbon lifestyles would look like and, even more importantly, how do we get there. Building on the work of the EU project on 1.5C lifestyles (https://onepointfivelifestyles.eu/) and my own research and work with students in recent years in projects such as 'Personal Sustainable Practice' and 'Buy Nothing Share Everything,' I initiated this year a research project focusing on designing for 1.5C lifestyles, which is exploring the following question: How might people drive the shift towards 1.5C lifestyles? How would they effectively bridge personal agency and systemic changes?

The project aims to explore how to effectively establish reciprocal relationships between individual and systemic actions, where individual actions and systemic interventions mutually support each other. This semester, I tested an initial version of the project in my course “Economics and Ethics of Sustainable Design.” It includes three phases: In the first part, students experiment for four weeks with personal changes based on recommendations by the EU project. In the second part, students research systemic factors, i.e., enablers and barriers that impacted their experience in the first part, as well as different roles they can play to impact these factors (e.g., norm entrepreneur, activist, designer). In the final part, they employ one or more of these roles to design systemic interventions that are needed to support the shift to 1.5C lifestyles (see all phases here: https://bit.ly/46vV3oo).

Next semester, the project will be tested in a number of MS-SDM sections of the course “Sustainable Business Models.” In addition, multiple workshops are planned with SDS graduate students, MS-SDM alumni, and sustainable lifestyle experts to further develop each one of the project phases. Furthermore, I plan to present the project at the ICTA-UAB Conference (Growth vs. Climate) in Barcelona in March 2024 and to the participants of the EU project in June 2024. Lastly, I intend to share the project online on the Sandbox Zero website with the intent to create a project blueprint that could be used and tested by people worldwide.

Otto von Busch

Making Civic Crafts - Mobile Workshop

During spring break 2024 I will run a workhop together with two craft researchers from School of Craft and Design in Gothenburg, Sweden, at Parsons on the theme of "Making Civicc Crafts." The workshop will be the start of a longer engagement together with craftspeople to explore how simple craft or making can be done outdoors in NYC as a form of public engagement. We will test to build simple outdoor public furniture and "hack" into various public spaces with craft to add new public functions to spaces (such as an extra bench in a park, or a swing in a tree, etc) The overall inquiry is to explore what "making" is when it is to serve the public and be done in ways that support public (rather than entrepreneurship/innovation/disruption etc). Our first session will be about creating a tool kit for outdoor and mobile wood crafts. For this we need sets of tools for a typical Parsons class-size (15 students), so about 2-4 pieces of basic non-electric woodcraft tools - saws, augers, sloyd axes, draw-knives, froes and materials to build foldable and mobile shaving horses/work-benches so we have the basics for a mobile wood-workshop. The workshop can then be used for more public work across the city, reaching spaces and communities beyond the walls of Parsons.

Ross Tibbles

Archiving Ephemeral Objects

The intentional nature of my creative practice and it’s use of found discarded objects and materials are threatened by their own decayed and continued decaying presence, which heightens the need for their preservation. Presently, I have approximately over 300+ pieces of art works which has formed an extensive living archive which is now in need of preserving and recording.
I intend to both document and to preserve/archive the works. In order to successfully document the work visually this would require me to collaborate with a professional photographer. In terms of archiving the work I would need to purchase materials for the construction of archive packaging for the works and the works themselves are made from of a variety of materials, in varying sizes and stages of fragility. I also intend to personally develop the text narrative around each art work which is an ongoing process.

Jennifer Rittner

What Are Design Studies?

As a follow-up to the Black Experience in Design 'Little Library' and consortium, I am developing a small pilot designed to inform high school students from communities underrepresented at Parsons about a range of design studies. In this first iteration, I am focusing on showcasing students at Parsons across the range of disciplines / programs the school offers. A further extension of the program may include insights into design student experiences outside of Parsons. The activities will include a digital and printed interview series with students responding to the prompts on Page 4 of this document:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LdvAFuQ61IME5L5jKGqthU7MDy3K8GyCzMrUCQkuC5E/edit?usp=sharing

The digital version can be disseminated via Parsons SDS and BBA social feeds. The printed version would be disseminated to participating schools. With funding, we could compensate student workers who participate in the planning, design, and implementation of the project.

Findings will include tracking metrics for the digital assets (likes and shares), documented feedback by participating schools, and tracking application requests and submissions by students from participating schools.

Andrew Shea

Creative AI Magnifier

For the past two years, I've dedicated my efforts to researching the ethics of AI and developing a tool tailored to empowering designers, artists, writers, musicians, and other creative individuals to navigate the evolving landscape shaped by generative AI. While the spotlight often shines on the latest AI applications or algorithms, there's a quieter but crucial conversation brewing about how these advancements are reshaping the very essence of creativity for designers, artists, writers, and other creators. Questions arise: Will the increasing prevalence of AI diminish our innate creativity? How do we reconcile the potential environmental impacts of integrating generative AI into our processes with its potential benefits? What ethical compass should guide us as we embrace AI in our craft?

This tool serves as a catalyst for introspection. Participants who use it will be prompted to contemplate the implications of adopting these technologies as integral parts of their creative journey. It reframes discussions around creative ethics, authenticity, data privacy, social inclusivity, technological stewardship, and environmental sustainability. By engaging with these prompts, participants are not only encouraged to reflect on their ethical stance while using AI, but are also provided with a personalized visualization that maps their utilization of AI against their core values, which fosters a deeper understanding of the intersection between creativity and ethics in the age of AI.

Courtney Morgan

Nuovo Beach Project

Only Other Designers is a storytelling movement with the goal of shifting the perspective of who designers are and who should have access to design. This proposal is for the second season of the audio docuseries that will center 8 designers / design collectives that are carving out their own paths within their respective industries. A part of the second season of the Only Other Designers, the team has developed "Only Other Designers Workshop”, an interactive series that aims to skillshare placemaking and placekeeping tools to empower community members as they navigate ongoing redevelopment of Baltimore City. The first workshop, focusing on archival practices will be a part of the 2024 Placemaking Conference taking place in Baltimore City June 5th- June 8th. The second workshop focusing on collective visioning, will be with a community partner Good Neighbor, a local hub for creatives, that will host a Design Week scheduled for June 2024.

Only Other Designers Workshops are geared towards sharing design tools for placekeeping with folks who don’t think they are designers, but want to have a say in placekeeping of their community. Participants will be provided with a work book for each session’s activities and additional activities and explorations so that they can continue their journey as a designer post workshop.

John Bruce

Collective Fabulation and Walking With

Collective Fabulation, Walking With is participatory research through collaborative activities and exchanges among Indigenous and nonindigenous people for co-creating imaginaries toward greater equity, justice, and planetary health. This research is a series of walks and gatherings that rely on methodologies of expanded ethnography (sensory, auto, assemblic), and collective story making. The events are in collaboration with members of an artistic- and design-based research collective–Vaporia Collective, https://www.vaporiagroup.com/–and local community partners (listed below), serving as hosts for the walks and gatherings. I am a member of Vaporia Collective, along with others who are faculty or frequent collaborators of TNS. Collective Fabulation, Walking With, as a series of collaborative research activities, is designed to foster the exchange of traditional knowledges, engage in embodied and spirit-centered learning through making, and connect with the land. The research and creative practice use a transnational approach for addressing issues of ongoing coloniality and for collectively contributing to conditions for restorative justice, reconciliation, and shared leadership. The first walk takes place April 7-12, 2024 in Oaxaca, Mexico in partnership with Camino Copalita https://www.caminocopalita.com/ and local Indigenous communities. The second walk takes place April 19-22, 2024 in Santa Marta, Colombia in partnership with a collective of weavers from the Katanzama Indigenous community, https://www.reincorporacion.gov.co/en/News/ACR%20News/91NEWS_ARN_2017.pdf.
These events are the first in a series that will continue to include walks in Canada, US, Europe, and the Middle East.

Matthew Villarreal

Borderlines Exhibition and Student Residency Project

Recently, my Aronson gallery proposal, "BORDERLINES: Spaces of Convergence" was accepted. This project includes 4 exhibition sites: the Aronson Gallery (NYC), CasaOtro Gallery (NM), Borderland Arts Initiative (BAI, TX), and The Bishop Gallery (Brooklyn).

While this project includes space for me and 5 other previously selected professional artists from the El Paso/Juarez/Las Cruces Borderplex region to share our work, it also includes the opportunity for students from Parsons and IHE’s from the Borderplex to participate in summer residency opportunities and an open call that will field artwork submissions for all 4 exhibition sites. The working artists previously selected explore notions of self, place, and home grounded in the same meta/physical landscape of the US-Mexico border.

This project starts Spring 2024 with an artist residency application cycle open to students from Parsons, The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), New Mexico State University (NMSU), El Paso Community College (EPCC), and Dona Ana Community College (DACC). 3 residency slots (1 at CasaOtro, 2 at BAI) will be filled by Parsons students, and 3 residency slots (2 at BAI, and 1 at the Bishop Gallery) will be filled by students from listed borderland IHEs. All residencies will occur summer of 2024.

An open call for time-based, 2D, and 3D student works from participating IHEs exploring themes of converging borders will occur Fall of 2024.

This project culminates with exhibitions planned for Winter 2024-2025 at all four gallery sites previously listed. Work from pre-selected professional artists alongside work by students selected for residency and the open call will be on display.

Public programming during exhibitions involves virtual artist panels, video viewing nights, and workshops open to students and the public. The project serves as a dynamic platform for artistic exploration, community involvement, and the convergence of diverse perspectives along shared borders.

Faculty

Title

Description

Sariah Park

Indigenous Fashion Symposium

In Spring 2024, I will be organizing an Indigenous Fashion Symposium, consisting of series of lectures and panel discussions. The Symposium will provide compensation for Indigenous artists, designers, and scholars to come to the university to participate in the lecture series and panel discussions. Participants will include Quannah Chasinghorse, Christian Allaire, Orlando Dugi, Sage Paul, and Jamie Okuma. This lecture series and panel discussions support new curriculum centering Indigenous Fashion Practices. This curriculum introduces Indigenous practices and systems of making from pre-contact to present day, showing how Indigenous communities continue to enlighten global thinking in sustainable design, agricultural health and environmental activism, to critical issues surrounding cultural advocacy, social justice, gender diversity, plurality, and inclusion. As an Indigenous artist and educator, I know how important it is to share a variety of Indigenous fashion worldviews and perspectives to the School of Fashion and the larger Parsons community.

Soojin Kang

"Empowering Bodies with 3D Seamless Knit Garments: Dynamic Compression for Enhanced Wellness with Human-Centered Design and Technology"

"Empowering Bodies with 3D Seamless Knit Garments: Dynamic Compression for Enhanced Wellness with Human-Centered Design and Technology," embodies a commitment to enhancing the well-being and strength of individuals through innovative 3D seamless knit wearable solutions. In an era where longevity is on the rise, my project seeks to prioritize human empowerment by leveraging cutting-edge technology, creative design, and a profound understanding of human needs.
The use of 3D seamless knitting, a computer-automated technology, brings comfort and a perfect fit to the garments, all while significantly reducing textile waste and labor. This sustainable approach ensures that each garment is tailored precisely to the wearer's needs, optimizing wellness and minimizing environmental impact.

Technological Advancement: Harness the power of wearable technology, including fiber science and smartly engineered knit constructions, to create dynamic knit compression garments that adapt to individuals' unique wellness needs, promoting enhanced strength support and physical well-being.

Human-Centered Design: Collaborate with experts in human-centered design to ensure that knit garments are user-friendly, comfortable, and tailored to the diverse anatomical needs of wearers, fostering inclusivity and cultural sensitivity.

User-Centric Research: Conduct in-depth user research to understand the wellness preferences of individuals across diverse age groups and backgrounds, ensuring that these knit garments cater to a wide range of needs and cultural perspectives.

Innovation in Aesthetics: Prototype and test knit compression garments that seamlessly blend advanced technology with aesthetic appeal, reflecting the human spirit and cultural diversity in their design.

Sustainability and Ethics: Prioritize sustainability in both the design and manufacturing process of knit garments to minimize environmental impact while maximizing the benefits for individuals and society.

Liliana Sanguino

Fashion's New Weave

Fashion’s new weave: Karmata-Rua 200

Discussions over recent years have begun to focus increasingly on issues of inclusivity and diversity in the fashion industry. Fashion shows have become synonymous with the A-List front row, a place for mingling virtuosos and aficionados, their sales focussed and industry serving. The catwalk itself has, without doubt, long championed diversity through choice of models, queerness is at home here. Door policies have eased, recently, a nod toward accessibility, and we can view shows online too. However, there remains a lack of awareness when it comes to the ‘other’. What else is happening, what other fashion shows might have been overlooked? Could inclusivity be thriving outside of the elite?

Millones de Maneras, meaning "millions of ways” is a collective formed by academic Liliana Sanguino, designer Laura Laurens with documentary maker Claudia Fischer. At its’s heart are a community of indigenous trans women of the Embera People, from reservation Karmata Rua ( Roux, Yina, Marcela, Jaima, Alex, Kimberly and Pamela), with additional creative input from Richard Battye and Gulsun Metin among others.

The story begins with fashion designer Laura Lauren’s employing the indigenous community of trans women to supply Embera traditional bead weaving for her designs and has grown to yield 4 projects in as many years. These have encompassed exhibitions, catwalk shows and workshops. Each project’s aims’ include bringing the women’s community much needed exposure, assisting in commercial growth, and bringing financial relief. It aims to help identify areas within the market, for the women to control and understand. The most vital principle has been the consultation of the core community, who have contributed in all areas of each project from the outset.

An unexpected and delightful offshoot of the collaboration came amidst plans to help Commemorate 200 hundred years of Karmata Rua. reservation, the trans women’s home. Impressed by their successes community leaders requested a fashion show to mark the bicentenary. The rest of the collaboration knew nothing of this until videos of the event were shared. The women took charge of the whole show, set, music, looks, casting, hair and make-up, everything that makes a fashion show. It was clear to me that this was an important moment in fashion, a show that embodies and celebrates true inclusivity. This show was not exclusive in any way, and it was understood, by those who came to cheer, through fashion. Realizing this importance I wanted to create a film to commemorate this time and also to make sure there was documentation for the future.

I have created a film that shows footage from the show mixed with the footage the women’s fashion show at Museo de Trajes in March 2023. The film has been selected for ARQDIS Pavilion 2023, an international conference that explores cutting-edge projects and practice-based research in the creative disciplines in Bogota, Colombia. The sound track for the film has been created using the audio from the phone recordings of the show mixed with music used in previous shows. For the conference I have submitted the film as an exhibition and will bring the women to Bogota. The aim of the exhibition space its to present an atmospheric snapshot of “Fashion’s New Weave” and to bring the collective to the conference, allowing the collaboration another opportunity to engage with an audience , it facilitates an interaction in the space, where dialogue about design can happen and provides an opportunity to learn, de-learn, listen, be heard, understand and embody new ways of being – together.

Carolina Obregon and Lucia Cuba

Fashion Systems Latin America Lab - Phase I

This project aims to build the conceptual foundation and knowledge base required to develop a Fashion Systems Latin America Lab over the next 3 semesters. We’re requesting funding for a sprint in support of the lab’s first phase. The sprint will aid in developing the lab’s blueprint as a foundational step. It will help outline the lab’s structure, goals, and methodologies based on the outcomes of the sprint. Open call to scholars and practitioners in the Latin American fashion system whose work is focused on sustainable practices and innovation, emphasizing diverse participation from different regions, backgrounds, and expertise.

The Lab will focus on initiatives that (1) map researchers and designers working in/from fashion systems in countries geopolitically identified within Latin America; (2) generate and disseminate information and knowledge on the issues these practitioners, (3) develop curriculum in the interdisciplinary field of design, fashion (4) serve to engage and bring together an international community of practitioners and scholars interested in issues of fashion systems, design, pedagogy, craft vs design, climate change, financial equity and (5) translate academic knowledge and practice-based experiences into tangible outreach projects and programs to foster practical and theoretical knowledge within Latin American local and global communities.

The generation of a LATAM Fashion Lab responds to the need to approach understanding where we stand at TNS and how we can foster novel and multiple relationships between Parsons SOF and LATAM practitioners to cultivate and develop a systemic vision of fashion collaborating with the Global North with the Global South.

Leila Kelleher

UnderWhere

In my work exploring Fat identity and Dress, participants frequently highlighted the difficulty of accessing all clothing, including appropriate underwear. Fatness, Disability, gender identity, poverty, and other intersections can mean that access to appropriate underwear is impossible and many folks simply go without.

Therefore, I will begin a research-to-application project that will address these inequities through access to appropriate underwear. In previous work, we expanded previous arts-based research with Fat folks (Barry, Evans, and Friedman 2021; Gurrieri 2013) by facilitating co-designed garments with fashion design students at Parsons. In this project, using a co-designing framework, we will center Fat and Disabled folks’ lived experiences and embodied expertise (Cooper 2016) to design and develop underwear for Fat-identified and/or Disability-identified people. We will especially seek participation from the most marginalized groups within our cohort - Superfat, Infinifat, and Disabled folks and those who identify as Trans, Non-Binary and Genderqueer at these intersections.

The project will consist of three distinct phases: Information gathering, Co-design and development, and Design dissemination. This School-based funding application is in support of Phase I: Information Gathering. In this phase, we will conduct a survey of Fat- and Disabled-identifying folks in order to identify key unserved underwear needs. In addition to descriptive data such as body measurements, we will identify participants’ practical wearing needs such as incontinence, menstruation, medical access, self or assisted dressing needs, soft tissue needs (for example low hanging abdominal tissue, chafing, and/or moisture management), genital affirmation needs (tucking or packing, for example). Additionally, we would also like to understand other important aspects of underwear, such as sexual expression, style preferences, and visual references of underwear that is not available to our participants. We are aiming for 400 respondents for this phase.

Daniel Drak

Digital Fashion & "Extended Identities"

I am leading a project that delves into the dynamic landscape of digital fashion and online identities, specifically focusing on the years 2019 - 2024. As digital fashion gains prominence in video games and digital platforms, there is a noticeable gap in research regarding evolving user preferences in this realm and the corresponding transformations in online identities. The primary aim of this research is to construct a comprehensive timeline and understanding of user trends concerning digital fashion and extended identities, spanning from the pre-pandemic era to our current context.

Additionally, the study seeks to unravel the evolving business landscape, exploring innovations such as platforms enabling user content creation, peer-to-peer exchange, and blockchain technology. The project's scope extends to tracking how major corporations, including Meta, have defined opportunities and business models in digital fashion. This will be contrasted with insights into how individual creators, especially marginalized ones have forged their own paths to success, leveraging digital fashion opportunities on platforms such as Roblox.

My research assistants will support this research and I will invite colleagues to participate if there is interest. The ultimate goal is to compile our findings into an article for submission to a special issue in 'Fashion, Style & Popular Culture' titled 'Dressing through Pandemics,' due on September 1, 2024.

Furthermore, I intend to utilize these research findings for presentations at relevant conferences starting in Fall ‘24. Insights will also be translated into content for core MPS classes, enriching the understanding of the evolution of digital fashion both as a phenomenon and as a new business model. In my role as the course author and coordinator of PMFM 5030 Technology and Innovation, this content will be developed into a shared teaching resource for faculty, specifically for the module 'Going Virtual: Web 3.0, Metaverse, Gaming & NFTs.’

Preeti Gopinath and Anette Millington

Radical Textiles: Pedagogical Innovation in the Parsons Textiles MFA Program

We are applying for seed funding to support the initial development of a publishing proposal for a book, Radical Textiles: Pedagogical Innovation in the Parsons Textiles MFA Program. The book will tell the story of a unique, authentic, and radical experiment in what it means to practice conscious design within a contemporary art and design school. We aim to unpack and articulate the Parsons Textiles MFA pedagogy as we graduate our fifth cohort in 2024.

The two steps we would fund with the award include:
1) conducting and transcribing community interviews
2) engaging a graphic designer to develop a set of prototype page mock-ups.

As context, the Parsons MFA Textiles program, led by founding Director Preeti Gopinath, promotes authenticity, originality, innovation, hybridity, and unique creativity within a multicultural and cross-disciplinary community of makers in New York. The program's pedagogy is based on craft thinking embodied practices and employs a model of community and collective teaching, which is rare in higher education. The program is delivered in a community studio, and the faculty guides independent work across multiple textile techniques. The model of collective teaching includes weaving together faculty with complementary expertise, and each faculty member makes a unique contribution to the course.

In five years of development, the program has seen students build unique practices, regenerate craft, integrate technology, engineer bio-materials, and tell their truths. The program has been a thought leader in local and global conversations that show new interest in textiles within the fine art world. The development of a book at this moment is important to archive the program's impact within a larger movement of conscious design and share a unique, authentic, and radical experiment in what it means to practice conscious design within a contemporary art and design school.

As founding faculty of the MFA Textiles program at Parsons, our vision is to change the world one textile at a time, by addressing issues of sustainability, social justice, well-being, and beauty through conscious making, raising awareness about the greater challenges of the planet and humanity, and striving to offer solutions through beauty and art, nuanced by scientific, philosophical and critical thinking. We dream of a Renaissance 2.0 for the 21st century’s digital age where slow craft and fast technology intermingle, nourish, and enhance each other. Our students and graduates create textiles that are meaningful, groundbreaking, and world-making.

Naika Colas

RefFashion Workforce Development

I am currently collaborating with The New York Fashion Workforce Development Coalition (NYFWDC) and the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development to manage and facilitate a Career Fair for asylum seekers who possess skills in sewing, tailoring, and fashion design. The objective of this Career Fair is to place experienced workers in fashion studios located in the garment district. These workers will then enter into a 6-month apprenticeship program funded by the city.