DESIGN ANTHROPOLOGY OF BORDERS
Mahmoud Keshavarz is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Engaging Vulnerability Research Program, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University, whose work sits at the intersection of design studies and the politics of movement and migration. Mahmoud has been a Visiting Scholar at Parsons School of Design and University of Gothenburg, and is the author of The Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility and Dissent, co-founder of the Decolonizing Design collective and co-editor of Design and Culture Journal.
For his GIDEST presentation, Mahmoud will focus on a research program developed over the last eight years based on theoretical, practical and pedagogic experiments. By discussing some examples of his previous work on the design politics of im/mobility as well as his current work on "smuggling as a technical critique of borders", he will sketch out what a design anthropology of borders, as an experimental endeavor, can entail, offer and challenge, and further, place this within the wider political-collaborative project of decolonizing design.