Åsa Ståhl

About Åsa Ståhl

I’m professor of design at HDK-Valand, Academy of Art & Design at the University of Gothenburg.

My work combines participatory design, speculations, and feminist technoscience. I work experimentally, collaboratively, and process-oriented across different fields of knowledge and integrate research, teaching and external collaborations on the topics of futures, un/making, householding, democracy and holistic sustainability.

Teaching:

I teach across BA, MA and PhD-level.

Since I first co-developed the course Experimental Radio Production at Malmö university in 2006, I have taught extensively in higher education. Over the years I have taught nationally and internationally in design educations and beyond, as well as in informal lifelong learning situations, focusing on design methods of collaboration and public engagement, demonstration of critical reflections through writing as well as supervision of design projects and degree projects.

I’m second supervisor to Agathe Malbet in the Just Transitions Graduate School, which aims to build knowledge and competence about how a just climate transition can be implemented in a local context.

Research:

I work in trans- and postdisciplinary collaborations on prefigurative design practices, artefacts, aesthetics and imaginaries that concern socio-ecological challenges and just transformations.

I co-lead the artistic research environment  Design after Progress: Reimiagining Design Histories and Futures, where we seek to carefully untie design’s entanglement with progress and to craft concrete imaginaries of a more socio-ecologically just design after progress. The environment is distributed cross four universities and is funded by the Swedish Research Council between 2023 and 2029.

I’m part of the Earth Logic Design research team, led by Mathilda Tham at Linnaeus University, where we seek to see how design can contribute to equitable lives within the limits of planet Earth. The research is part of InKuiS – Innovative Cultural Entrepreneurship in Collaborative Co-creative Research, funded by the Kamprad Family Foundation for Entrepreneurship, Research & Charity between 2022 and 2027.

Commissions:

I represent the artistic faculty in the Centre for Sea and Society steering committee.

I represent the artistic faculty in Urban Futures’ track for art and culture.

Miscellaneous 

Me and my long-term collaborator and colleague Kristina Lindström started the Un/Making Studio as part of the artistic research project Un/Making Matters - maintenance, repair and composting and other ways of caring for that which has already been made. Funded by the Swedish Research Council.

I have conducted externally funded artistic research together with Kristina Lindström since 2006 when I was a junior researcher at the IT-research institute Interactive Institute. The first project was called [ordlekar]. The two of us later went on to do an awarded, joint collaborative thesis across two disciplines at Malmö university. 

In 2018, we were part of co-initiating the Design and posthumanism network.

See publications and more of my previous work at ORCiD.