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Event Details
We are excited to announce the launch of the Emerging Scholars Workshop, a new initiative at Design and Culture that supports the work of scholars and practitioners seeking assistance and camaraderie in developing their work for publication. As a group of young academics ourselves pursuing and producing knowledge in dialogue with the cultural aspects of design, we aim to support others who wish to participate in such endeavors but are unsure of how to dip their toe into the world of design academia. We want to thank the editors, Barbara, Jilly, and Mahmoud for trusting us to steward this new program. We also want to invite others who are interested in becoming part of the workshop team to reach out to us.
As the new editors of this journal highlight in their introduction, both “design” and “culture” are complex and ambiguous practices that cannot be extricated from the political. In their effort to select work that critically examines issues of power asymmetry, inclusion, diversity, and social justice, we view this workshop as an apparatus to identify work that is rigorous and noteworthy but has not yet found a fitting venue and audience. We recognize that research and projects taking shape in-between and across disciplines, perspectives, and communities can be easily overlooked. The Emerging Scholars Workshop takes this into account, acknowledging that academic publishing can be daunting, particularly for those engaged in transdisciplinary work and for those who are new to this landscape. We aim to identify emergent and important knowledge that although compelling, requires tending before it enters into conversation with an academic audience.
Workshop Process
Using a collaborative workshop format, we are committed to thoughtfully providing care for work going through this process. This will be provided in the form of peer-to-peer discussions, scholarly resources, and editorial assistance. We will have two semester-long workshops per year: in fall (starting mid-September), and spring (starting mid-January). An initial discussion will provide ideas and next steps for editing and revising submissions in preparation for the workshop. We will provide guidance in researching and accessing existing research and literature that might deepen the rigor of the work.
Once ready, we will begin the workshop process and you will upload your revision for comments and editing suggestions from our team. After this, we will engage in collective discussion of the submission to offer peer feedback and support the development of the draft. Once workshopped, and deemed ready, your paper will be submitted for the peer review process at Design and Culture. Our goal is to support authors as they move through the process of scholarly publishing and to provide a sounding board so they are not alone in this endeavor.
Once a submission has gone through the process and is submitted to the journal, authors join the extended Design and Culture intellectual community. As a growing support network for aspiring design scholars, we hope you will become a mentor to other writers and practitioners trying to publish their work through this initiative.
Submission Instructions
In the nature of inclusion, we invite students, practitioners, scholars, those who do not normally write in English, and those who may not identify as being in design studies but wish to engage in discourse with the design discipline to submit work directly to us. We will evaluate submissions and schedule workshops on a case-by-case basis. To honor this initiative, we will prioritize work that we believe would benefit the most from this process. Examples of this would be students who wish to translate their studio projects and classwork into an academic article, or practitioners unfamiliar with academic publishing who wish to engage with design scholarship. Just as practices of design and cultural processes are ongoing projects, this initiative and selection process is also an ongoing effort from which we will collaboratively learn as we go.
To submit work for consideration, we have provided these guidelines. We ask you to submit at minimum, a 900-word author statement in which you address the critical and/or aesthetic issues you aim to explore through your work. Each author statement should also include the research question your work addresses, a brief discussion of the intellectual merit of the project, and its potential broader impacts. In addition to the statement we ask that you submit a bibliography listing the critical resources that inform the project. Think of this submission as the skeleton of the paper upon which we will build through the workshop. That being said, papers that are more developed and have clearly articulated ideas will have a higher chance of being considered. For students or practitioners who have already begun writing, whether a thesis paper or a personal first attempt, we ask that submissions do not exceed 8000 words.
Project Formats
These submissions should discuss and present projects that are either completed or close to completion. Submissions should not be proposals for new research or practices. We ask that the work you submit is work that is now ready for reflection and refinement. We are not only looking for conventional academic journal articles, but also invite the submission of visual essays, round-table-conversations, and other formats as the editors note here. For these formats, we still ask for a 900-word author statement.
We look forward to building a community of peers that expands the borders of both practice and scholarly work.
To submit, please email us at workshop.designculture@gmail.com with both your critical support paper and your CV.
Best wishes from the Emerging Scholars Workshop Coordinators!
Verónica Uribe del Águila is a Ph.D. student in Communication and Science Studies programs at the University of California San Diego. Her work explores the intersection between critical geography, design, labor, and feminist/decolonial STS.
Teresa Naval is a PhD student in Communication and Science Studies at the University of California - San Diego. Teresa’s research interests include STS, theater and performance, logistics, and speculation.
Anh-Ton Tran is a Ph.D. student in Human Centered Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He works as a part of the Experimental Civics Studio and his current research looks at data and design.
Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis for both the fall and the spring workshops.
