Special Issue of Design and Culture: short papers on Design Education and Social Innovation (April 2014)

Contacts: Scott Townsend (scott_townsend@ncsu.edu) and Brian Donnelly (brian.donnelly@sheridanc.on.ca)
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 April 2014

Design and Culture invites proposals for short ‘position papers’ on emerging issues in design education and social innovation for an upcoming feature section (Vol. 7 no. 2, July, 2015). We seek a total of six to eight papers of no more than 1500 words that develop a clear and concise thesis, outline a particular educational strategy, and make an argument for how this position responds to a particular cultural need and context. We would like to foster voices that can discuss and expose the underlying values in specific educational perspectives. We invite exploratory and contrasting positions.

Design education, once more or less discipline-based and defined by reproductive technologies, is undergoing a metamorphosis. Educational frameworks have shifted to respond to social and cultural complexity through a diversification of methods, values, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

In contemporary design education, recognition of the need for a more complex understanding of social, economic and technological issues is evidenced in changing curricula and educational debates. Complex design interventions that work in diverse social contexts have come to augment and even displace what were relatively clear, artifact-based design disciplines. In Master’s and PhD programs in particular, research methods and practices, and a renewed sense of emphasis on cultural context, services and outcomes, are at the center of discussion.

Submissions should take the form of a short abstract, both concise and specific, up to one page in length on the above themes. Please also include a one page cv and institutional affiliation/contact information.

Abstract submission deadline April 30, 2014. If your abstract is selected it will be due in final format by August 30, 2014 for publication in 2015.

Please send your submissions to both editors, Scott Townsend (scott_townsend@ncsu.edu) and Brian Donnelly (brian.donnelly@sheridanc.on.ca)