Workshops, Classes, and Panels

[[ Facilitating a Design Studio - Overview |Seeing, Being, Doing: small-letter ‘d’ design ]] - 2022

A 4-month studio module for 22 undergraduate interaction design students. Held in two+ sites in India, we explored embodied design praxis. What does it mean to design artistically? Can a designer respond like an artist to their context and allow for more freeform exploration of designed outputs than industry dogma <+ with Navin and Siddhant>

Beyond Listening- 2022

A 5-day design masterclass on the interface of publishing with non-textual media, what are the politics of sound? How do oral narratives and audial aesthetics come together? How is this important in India, where specifically English read-write-speak literacy is low? This class focused on exploring storytelling through the medium of sound and understanding how sound mediated interactions. Students delved into the world of podcasts, examining the elements of podcast production and the power of sound in storytelling. They also learned about listening, oral history, and different interview methods. The class covered audio editing tools and techniques, allowing students to craft their own audio stories. Additionally, discussions on open source publishing, licenses, and the politics of design were held. The class culminated in a final podcast project, where students planned, produced, and exhibited their own podcasts. Throughout the course, students developed a deep appreciation for the role of sound in storytelling and gained practical skills in audio production and storytelling techniques.<+ with Bhanu P and Shafali J>

Valuing Indispensability: Critically reflecting on Intersectionality in Practice - 2022

3 workshops run in a series of workshops called the Feminist Tech Playground, where we presented how we encounter voices in praxis that are rendered dispensable and dismissed. How do we create spaces where indispensability is the norm? <+ With Upasana B and Shafali J>

[[ Lived Experience Archives for Champions of the Disability Sector ]] - 2022

A full-day workshop was held for regional coordinators of the Disability NGO Alliance to demonstrate different ways for them to start archiving their day-to-day practices and knowledge and how it is valuable to them in their work. <+ With Bhanu, Senjuti and Madhavi>

Alternatives and Demands in Network Ruins - 2021

What can we conjure when the networks lie in ruins? What grows between that which ruins and that which was ruined? A panel talk recounting Servelots/Janastu’s experiments with Community Networks <+ With Shafali J>

Ways of Seeing: Archives and Annotations – 2021

A design demo/workshop on how institutional archives would benefit from an exchange of discovery, annotation, and re-narration and what that means for the nature of locked-up knowledge. A demo of a tool we were building that I was designing for this cross-linking, built on web-annotation standards. <+ with Bhanu, Venkat, Satakshi, Dinesh, Shafali>

A workshop on how design can further/impede the goals of social justice, namely equity. How can we design practices, places, and products that build a momentum of better outcomes for the most marginalized? <+ with Senjuti, Siddhant>

The Imposter Among Us: A Discussion on the effect of new media on politics – 2021

A discussion facilitated by Paul and me through readings about “How do platforms compel/enable the manufacturing of “truth” and “ignorance”? And what does that mean in the context of live-streaming politicians”

Design Beku Townhall – 2021

A workshop was conducted with a larger collective to arrive at a set of principles for Design Beku. Design Beku is an organization that advocates against the flippant imposition of design thinking and instead practices conscientious design with its collaborators from various communities to design as a collaborative, participatory practice. This townhall was instrumental in giving form to the organization when it was still in its infancy.

Grant-Based Projects

Research Associate, Climate Resource Center - 2022

LLNaF was awarded a grant for building a library of Climate Science Practices from the ground up through oral narratives from farmers. I was a Research Associate, interviewing agricultural experts, farmers, and folklore artists.

Grant-Based Publications

Jingle Tales - 2022

We describe a project that we did in Mirzapur, India where we sent laptops made of Raspberry Pis to young women.

Learning from COWs: Community Owned Wifi-Mesh - 2022

In this article, we reflect on our practice of facilitating spaces with communities and arrive at principles that can support open climate networks.

Techno-futures from Bidar - 2021