Details below for a PhD course in Design Anthropology which will run next spring at the Dept. of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen 22nd - 26th March 2010 and at the newly founded Participatory Innovation Research Centre, Mads Clausen Institute, University of Southern Denmark 3rd - 7th May 2010.

Places are limited to 25 students and we are hoping for a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds (including design!). You may apply as soon as possible if you are interested.

Design Anthropology is an emergent field concerned with the design of technologies that build upon and enhance embodied skills of people, through attention to the dynamics of performance and the coupling of action and perception (as against the more traditional focus on mental computational operations). This is a radically new area of research that cuts across a wide range of fields from industrial design, through human movement studies and ecological psychology, to sociocultural anthropology. From an anthropological perspective, it resonates with four areas of interest that are generating some of the most exciting new work in the discipline: exchange and personhood in the production and use of technology, the understanding of skilled practice, the anthropology of the senses and the aesthetics of everyday life.

The aim of the course is to challenge conventional thinking regarding the nature of design and creativity, in a way that acknowledges the improvisatory skills and perceptual acuity of people. Combining theoretical investigations and practice based experiments in a series of research seminars; the course addresses questions regarding methodological innovation within processes of designing/ using things. Studying the relation between design practice and use practice, researchers place emphasis on the creativity of design and emergence of objects in social situations and collaborative endeavour. Specifically, current anthropological theories concerning institutional divisions between innovation and improvisation, transactions, exchange and personhood will be brought to bear on the form objects take in technological or other contexts giving due attention to the situated nature of processes of production and consumption, and to social form. Working alongside international researchers from  academia and industry, doctoral students are asked to contribute towards long-term research goals of expanding understandings of ethnographic practice in academia and industry, and developing a research agenda for the emergent field of design anthropology.

The two-part course will take place at the Dept. of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen 22nd - 26th March 2010 and at the newly founded Participatory Innovation Research Centre, Mads Clausen Institute, University of Southern Denmark 3rd - 7th May 2010. A detailed course description, reading list and evaluation criteria will be available online for registered students from the end of December 2009.

Application procedure: Doctoral candidates from the disciplines of architecture, philosophy, design and innovation, engineering and anthropology are encouraged to apply. A detailed statement (500 words maximum) outlining research interests in design anthropology along with a one page CV is required. Applicants are requested to register before 18th of December 2009.

Contact: gunn@mci.sdu.dk
SPIRE Centre,
University of Southern Denmark

Design Anthropology
Organisers Wendy Gunn, Jared Donovan, Tim Ingold and James Leach