Two presentations by Grace Turtle and Prathima Muniyappa share approaches to how design and anthropological research impact the development of emerging technologies, and the potential for a meeting of the disciplines to dream up more just technological futures.
Visions of future technologies are often propagated by big tech, engaging in neo-colonial practices to turn those visions into reality, while relying on non-Western countries for cheap labor and the extraction of raw materials. Market-oriented user research employs ethnographic methods for greater adoption of those technologies, thus further colonizing less competitive markets.
This session asks how a reflective and critical anthropological approach can unearth alternative techno-imaginaries and infuse design’s world-making with more local, situated knowledge and hopes.
The session is co-moderated by researcher, educator, and editor Anna N. Nagele.
The blanket expanse of deep space has enchanted the cultural imagination of nearly every civilization on earth, with its vast scale becoming the fountainhead of creation mythology for sky-bound minds inhabiting earthbound cultures. Indeed, it is the notion of shared provenance that legitimizes every culture’s equal right over the territory of space.
Indigenous people across the globe remain explorers of the incredible mystery that animate our skies through rich cultural cosmologies evolved over millennia of observation. Their knowledge represents diverse ontologies that offer insight into radically different relationships that humans have evolved with space and its exploration, and is a source of intangible heritage that rarely makes an appearance in the mainstream discourses on space exploration.
As humans become prominent actors in extraterrestrial realms, we pose complex questions of identity. Whose identity becomes a blueprint for “humanity?” What cultures are represented? What others are silenced by deliberate obscuration, or worse—by ignorance and apathy? In response to the issue presented by monolithic identities and monocultures of mind, this lecture explores the storied cultural heritage preserved in Indigenous communities, and presents alternative cultural ontologies relating to the stars, the cosmos, and other dimensions, and extended voyages that can shape the discourse for a more inclusive and diverse mythology of future space exploration.
Prathima Muniyappa (she/her) is a designer, conservator, and research assistant for the Space Enabled research group at the MIT Media Lab in the United States. She is a PhD candidate in the Media Arts and Sciences at the Media Lab. Her interests address issues of social justice, democratic access for historically marginalized communities, and enabling Indigenous agency. Her research investigates alternative cosmologies and cultural ontologies for their potential to contribute to emerging discourse on techno-imaginaries in the realm of space exploration, synthetic biology, and extended intelligence.
This presentation gives insight into queer knowledge-making practices, orientations, and tactics that foreground fluidity, plurality, and more-than-human entanglements as interventions in AI systems.
Drawing from a background in futuring, intersecting with AI research, and design for more-than-human relations, Grace will share some of their recent auto-theoretical experimentation in queering AI that plays with subversive data practices to distributed agency and co-predictive relations in making and performing with digital twin simulations from a Mestizx perspective. This sharing responds to a dilemma: AI’s impulse to “fix” possible worlds. “Fixing” here means the attempt or desire to secure, settle, or predetermine (un)anticipated realities, which often preempts more nuanced and unpredictable emergences of bodies and worlds by reinforcing normative behaviors. In short, this presentation proposes new directions, or minor trans/formations in how AI is developed, making space for emergent, queer (re)generative futurities as a horizon of possibilities.
Grace Turtle (they/them) is a Colombian-Australian designer and researcher exploring AI, critical design, and strategic foresight from a queer mestiza perspective. Their PhD at TU Delft’s DCODE Network (2021–2025) examines co-predictive relations, affects, and futurities in modeling more-than-human worlds. They co-direct Monstrous Futurities: Practices in (Un)learning, (Un)making, (Un)worlding (2025–2027) at Sandberg Institute in the Netherlands. Formerly Design Futures & Insight Lead at Deloitte Digital (AU-NL), they supported organizations in participatory, civic-oriented design. They co-founded Australia’s first queer womxn-led makerspace. They are a member of Holon (x Becoming) (CAT), with work featured at PRIMER Festival, Telefonica Madrid, and TEDx Sydney.
Event language: English with Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) speech-to-text translation support.
Accessibility: Please contact anna.nagele@uni-ak.ac.at if you have any (access) needs for us to consider, or if you have questions about the access provided.
Register here
This event is part of the On the Seam: Anthropology, Design, and Situated Practices symposium navigating frictions, collaborations, and politics shaping present struggles and future possibilities.
The symposium is a collaboration between Futuress and the Department of Design History and Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria, as part of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)-funded research project “Design Anthropology: Cold War Industrial Design & Development” (Grant DOI 10.55776/PAT4411223).
The event is co-curated by Anna N. Nagele and Maya Ober and co-coordinated by Mio Kojima and Anna N. Nagele. Visuals by Heba Daghistani.
Full symposium program
May 8, 2025
2:00 pm – 2:15 pm CEST
Welcome & Opening Remarks
2:15 pm – 3:35 pm CEST
Lectures Session
Pedagogy and Education at the Seam of Anthropology and Design
With Bibiana Serpa and Cherry-Ann Morgan
Moderated by Maya Ober
3:50 pm – 5:10 pm CEST
Lectures Session
Anthropology and Design Shaping Techno-Imaginaries
With Prathima Muniyappa and Grace Turtle
Moderated by Anna N. Nagele
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm CEST
Roundtable
Frictions, Futures, and Possibilities of Anthropology & Design
With Dana Burton, Mahmoud Keshavarz, and Helen Pritchard
Moderated by Anna N. Nagele and Maya Ober
May 9, 2025
9:30 am – 9:45 am CEST
Welcome & Opening Remarks
9:45 am – 11:05 am CEST
Lectures Session
Engaged Practices in Anthropology & Design
With Imad Gebrael and Farah Hallaba
Moderated by Amanda Haas Halim
11:20 am – 12:50 pm CEST
Group Conversation
Let’s Talk About Ways of Knowing
Moderated by Mio Kojima and Bibiana Serpa
12:50 pm – 1:00 pm CEST
Closing Remarks & End of Symposium
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