[in-enaction] CfP: 21st Century Makers and Materialities - Research Through Design 2015 conference | Aζ South Asia

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We are excited to invite submissions for the second bi-annual Research Through Design (RTD) conference, to be held in Cambridge, UK, between the 25th and 27th of March 2015. RTD supports the dissemination of practice-based research through a novel and experimental conference format, comprising a curated exhibition of design research accompanied by round-table discussions in OERooms of Interest. The exhibition will be used as a platform for presenting and demonstrating research processes and outputs, and for generating debate about the role of the design practitioner and their work in a research context. Building on the success of inaugural RTD conference held in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2013, the second conference, RTD 2015, is to be hosted at Microsoft Researchs new European lab in the centre of Cambridge, which promises to be an exciting venue for exploring what design practice means in the early-21st Century.

RTD 2015 aims to foreground the materiality of design research, placing its artefacts, processes, and practices centre stage. We invite submissions from researcher-practitioners documenting research through design projects, including descriptions of methods, processes and insights emerging from a design inquiry and offering a departure point for rich discussion. Criteria for selection are based on the authors presentation of artefacts (constituting research process or outcomes) as central to their submission; the artefacts will be included in the curated exhibition, and papers should accompany the exhibited artefact in a presentation of 'research through design' at the conference.

Contributions to RTD 2015 may fall under (but are not limited to) the following themes:

Ways of Making: Experiences, explorations, procedures and aesthetics;
Ways of Knowing: Methodologies of practice, intentionality and critical thinking;
Ways of Being: Craft practitioners; researcher identity; engagement and collaboration;
Process Interrupted: Work in progress; critical reflective practice.

We strongly encourage participation from a wide range of Design disciplines including but not limited to: Product, Industrial, Interaction, Service, Textile, Craft, Jewellery, Fashion, Architecture, Interior, Experience, Film, and those working at the intersection of disciplines such as Human-Computer Interaction or in more emergent fields and practices such as Synthetic Biology.