Pannel Discussion: What’s next for Critical and Speculative Practices in Higher Education?

*Day02. Thursday, July 08, 013:00 EDT

This panel brings together educators from different disciplines in a conversation about approaches, learnings and challenges of critical and speculative practices in teaching.

Jen Ross is a senior lecturer in Digital Education, and co-director of the Centre for Research in Digital Education. Her research is located at the intersections of new technology, digital cultures, and education, examining how digital technologies affect ideas and practice in higher education and in the cultural heritage sector. She publishes and teaches on topics including education and learning futures, museum and gallery learning and engagement, surveillance cultures in education, the impact and pedagogy of MOOCs and open education, student and teacher experiences of online distance learning, and online writing and reflection. She is one of the team behind the Digital Education online postgraduate programme, the Manifesto for Teaching Online, and the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC, and is currently co-leading the development of a new postgraduate programme in Education Futures at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Find her on Twitter at @jar.URL: http://jenrossity.net/blog/

Ingi Helgason is a Senior Research Fellow at Edinburgh Napier University in the Centre for Interaction Design. She was a partner on the recent SpeculativeEdu project funded by the European Union’s ERASMUS+ programme, with the aim of strengthening speculative design education by collecting and exchanging existing knowledge and experience whilst developing new methods in the field of speculative design. Currently she is a researcher on Creative Informatics, a project funded by the UK’s Creative Industries Clusters Programme and managed by the Arts & Humanities Research Council as part of the Industrial Strategy. Over the past decade Ingi has divided her time between teaching and research, including teaching interaction design and technology innovation at the Open University, UK. Ingi has a PhD in Interaction Design and an MSc in Multimedia and Interactive Systems. She has worked on European Commission and UK funded technology research projects covering topics such as immersive experiences, presence research and ubiquitous computing.

Ivica Mitrović is assistant professor at the Department of Visual Communications Design at the Arts Academy (University of Split). He holds a PhD from the University of Split (Human Computer Interaction) and has also specialized at several other international institutions. As a guest lecturer and workshop leader, he has been invited to various eminent international institutions. His work has been shown at multiple national and international design exhibitions. Since 2001, he has worked on promoting and introducing critical and speculative design as new design practices in Croatia and the region. He has co-edited two publications about speculative design practice (for the Croatian Designers Association): "Introduction to Speculative Design Practice – Eutropia, a Case Study" (2015) and "Speculative – Post-Design Practice or New Utopia?" (2016) (accompanied by the exhibition at Triennale di Milano). He was the initiator and a coordinator of the SpeculativeEdu project. http://speculativeedu.eu

Søren Rosenbak is a designer, researcher and educator currently based in Copenhagen. He is driven by design’s capacity for giving us a sense of what is possible in this world, and holds a PhD in pataphysically infused design from Umeå Institute of Design.