Design and Social Sciences
Yesterday saw the first of a series of evening seminars exploring Design and Social Sciences, hosted by Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process in the Sociology department at Goldsmiths. Here’s a snippet from a poster (download it here) describing the seminar series:
The CSISP seminar series on ‘Design and Social Science’ aims to explore these points of contact through a range of discussions that address such key topics as theory, practice, research, user, object, product, audience etc. Though the immediate objective is to enhance mutual understanding across disciplinary practices, it is also hoped that this series can serve as a platform for opening up interdisciplinary research futures.
The series has been convened by Mike Michael from Sociology and Bill Gaver from Design, who both kicked of the series with some initial observations about commonalities and differences between approaches to research within their disciplines.
Material Beliefs is interested in drawing upon the criticality and methodology of the social sciences, and is particularly drawn to writing from the science and technology studies community. This is of interest not only as a way of discussing what happened after the project has finished, but as a way upon reflecting upon the practical features that arise from ‘doing’ the project, and being attentive to what and how outcomes emerge.
With this in mind, Elio and Tobie will be talking about Material Beliefs at the fourth session in this series. This takes place on November 21st from 16:00 to 18:00. It’s a fairly small venue, but please contact Natalie Warner if you would like to attend any of the sessions described on the poster.
From a poster to accompany the series, designed by Alex Wilkie.