DRS Connects

DRS Connects: Santiago 2026 Opens a New Chapter for Design Research in Latin America

The first edition of DRS Connects (DRS Conecta) brought design research leaders from seven countries to Santiago, marking three firsts for the Design Research Society (DRS): its first regional gathering, its first event held in Spanish, and its first focused on design research leadership. The initiative strengthened the Latin American presence within the Society and laid the groundwork for a regional collaboration agenda.

On 25–26 August 2026, the Faculty of Design at Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD) hosted DRS Connects: Santiago 2026, a new DRS initiative to connect its international community with regional design research ecosystems around the world.
Under the theme Local Knowledge · Global Dialogue · Collaborative Futures, the event brought together 18 delegates from 11 institutions in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Peru. Together, they shared capabilities, experiences and challenges, identified opportunities for collaboration, and began building a common agenda for the region.

From left to right: Cecilia Landa, Mariana Amatullo, Alejandra Amenábar, Justin Sacks & Paulina Contreras.

According to Professor Hua Dong, Chair of the DRS “Design Research Society will benefit from a more diverse membership. We need to reach out to the international design research and education communities, more proactively. The DRS Connects initiative has explored a novel model of community building, and I thank all the colleagues who have made this possible.”

"The participating institutions are now linked to 100 DRS memberships, most of them new members — a significant step towards broadening and diversifying Latin American participation in the Society”,  said Justin Sacks, Executive Director of the DRS".

In this photo: Justin Sacks and the audience at DRS Connects: Santiago

For Paulina Contreras Correa, Director of Research at the UDD Faculty of Design and member of the DRS Executive Board, the initiative is about far more than geographic expansion: “DRS Conecta was born from a conviction: Latin America holds an enormous wealth of design research knowledge, experience and capability that we need to recognise, make visible and connect. We want these connections to transcend borders and become concrete opportunities for collaboration. Our aim is to strengthen our regional community while actively contributing to a more diverse, inclusive and connected global design research community.”

In this photo: Paulina Contreras Correa

In the words of Cecilia Landa-Avila, former Chair of the IAC, who helped spearhead DRS Connects: “DRS Connects emerged as an IAC initiative, and it represents an important step toward transforming global engagement within design research. Beyond the practical benefits of geographic proximity, this initiative embodies a vital recognition that design research is fundamentally plural, with each community and region contributing unique epistemologies and methodologies. While we celebrate this gathering, we are even more excited about the long-term connections, dialogue, and impact it will catalyse”.

In this photo: Cecilia Landa-Avila and the audience at DRS Connects: Santiago

A New Chapter for the DRS in Latin America

The opening session brought together university authorities, DRS representatives, researchers and academic leaders from institutions across Latin America.
UDD Rector Federico Valdés highlighted the university’s commitment to educating professionals capable of leading the country’s development and generating knowledge that serves society: “Welcoming the Design Research Society and organising DRS Conecta Santiago is an opportunity to strengthen an international community that understands design as a tool for transforming reality.”

In this photo: Federico Valdés and the audience at DRS Connects: Santiago

In this photo: Alejandra Amenábar and the audience at DRS Connects: Santiago

Alejandra Amenábar, Dean of the UDD Faculty of Design, emphasised the region’s potential: “Our continent has enormous cultural, social and territorial richness. It faces deeply complex challenges and, precisely for that reason, it has a great deal to contribute to design research.”

DRS representatives from around the world sent video messages welcoming this first gathering and the opportunity to bring new voices and perspectives into the international community: Hua Dong, Chair of the DRS Executive Board and Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art. Peter Lloyd, former DRS Chair, Editor-in-Chief of Designing: The Journal of the Design Research Society and Professor at TU Delft. Luca Simeone, member of the DRS Executive Board and Associate Professor at the Service Design Lab, Aalborg University.

The public programme included a presentation by Justin Sacks on the challenges and opportunities of design research from the perspective of an international community, and a keynote by Mariana Amatullo, National Dean of the School of Architecture, Art and Design at Tecnológico de Monterrey, on design’s potential to drive social transformation from a Latin American perspective, and Gabriel León, molecular biologist and science communicator, highlighting the value of interdisciplinary research and collaboration.

Design Research Leaders’ Roundtable
Following the opening activities, the first day continued with a roundtable of Latin American design research leaders.
Each institution presented its context, capabilities, research lines, initiatives and main challenges. The exchange revealed shared interests and opportunities for collaboration among institutions that, despite operating in very different realities, face common challenges in strengthening design research.

Towards a Latin American Design Research Agenda 2026–2030
The agenda-building process was led by Paulina Contreras and Cecilia Landa, Vice Chair of the DRS International Advisory Council (IAC), and facilitated by IAC members Úrsula Bravo and Alejandra Poblete, together with UDD researchers Mariluz Soto and Andrea Wechsler.

To extend participation beyond the in-person event, the process also included two online workshops — one in Spanish and one in Portuguese — bringing in further voices, experiences and perspectives from researchers across Latin America. The Spanish-language workshop was led by Sofía Bosch Gomez (Northeastern University, inaugural recipient of the DRS Rachel Cooper Award for Emerging Design Research Leadership ) with Ignacio Toledo and Francisco Zamorano (UDD); the Portuguese-language workshop was led by Claudia Libânio (Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre, IAC member) and Tiago Barros (Universidade de Brasília).

In total, around 50 people took part in the in-person and online workshops, helping to identify shared challenges and new opportunities for collaboration among researchers and institutions in the region.

Learn more about the online workshops and the perspectives of their facilitators in our dedicated story. *LINK*

The outcomes of this process form the basis of the proposed DRS Connects (DRS Conecta) Latin America Agenda 2026–2030, structured around three complementary dimensions:

• Local Knowledge: recognising, understanding and making visible the capabilities, actors, networks and knowledge present across Latin America’s design research ecosystems.
• Global Dialogue: connecting regional communities with the international DRS network, fostering a two-way exchange of knowledge, experiences and opportunities.
• Collaborative Futures: creating the conditions to turn connections into lasting relationships, joint projects and collaborative initiatives that can develop and grow over time.

Researchers from several Latin American institutions have already expressed interest in leading and supporting these lines of work, taking the first steps towards turning the connections made in Santiago into concrete opportunities for collaboration.

In this photo: Justin Sacks, Regina Alfaro

Group photo: DRS Connects: Santiago 2026.

 
More Voices in the Conversation: Perspective Papers
As a third avenue for participation, DRS Connects opened a call for Perspective Papers to the attendees of DRS Connects. The aim is to gather, document and give visibility to the perspectives, experiences, challenges and reflections of the Latin American design research community. 

A Network Taking Root and Reaching New Territories
DRS Connects was not conceived as a one-off event, but as the starting point of a regional collaboration process designed for continuity and international reach. One of its goals is to consolidate an active Latin American network and encourage future editions at other institutions and in other territories.

“In the year the DRS celebrates its 60th anniversary, it has been especially meaningful to launch DRS Conecta and open a new chapter for the Society in Latin America. Our vision is for each new territory to become an active node in a global design research community that keeps growing, diversifying and staying connected,” said Contreras.
“With DRS Connects, we wanted to show design research communities everywhere that DRS needs their voices, and that we are actively working to bridge historical gaps in inclusion and engagement and cultivating meaningful international collaboration.

While we seized the opportunity to launch here because several IAC members are based in the region, this initiative is by no means limited to Latin America; we envision DRS Connects reaching design research communities all around the world,” said Cecilia Landa-Avila.

The DRS extends special thanks to Universidad del Desarrollo and to all participating institutions, delegates, speakers, facilitators and community members who made this first edition possible.

We invite you to join this community and be part of an initiative that connects local knowledge, fosters global dialogue and builds collaborative futures for design research.

Group photo: DRS Connects: Santiago 2026.