New Directions in Design History symposium

J. Dakota Brown teaches and writes on the intertwined histories of design, labor, and capital. After studying graphic design at North Carolina State University, he completed an MA in visual studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2022, he graduated from Northwestern University’s PhD program in Rhetoric and Public Culture. He is currently a visiting associate professor at the UIC School of Design. Dakota’s writing has appeared in Jacobin, Post45, and the edited volume After the Bauhaus, Before the Internet: A History of Graphic Design Pedagogy. A short collection of his essays was recently published in Portuguese translation by Brazil’s Clube do Livro do Design.

Caspar Lam is a partner at Synoptic Office, an award-winning design consultancy that works with leading cultural, civic, and business organizations worldwide. He is also an Assistant Professor of Communication Design at Parsons, where he led the curricular transformation and growth of one of the largest undergraduate Communication Design programs in the U.S. during his tenure as Program Director. Caspar’s work has been exhibited internationally and recognized by the ADC, AIGA, Design Week, Fast Company, and the Webbys, among others. A frequent contributor to articles and books, he speaks widely on design’s role in shaping culture. Caspar is a former Executive Board Member of AIGA NY and currently serves on the board of the Museum Computer Network advancing the digital transformation of museums. In 2022, he was honored in Creative Review’s Creative Leaders 50 list, which celebrates global leaders advancing their field.

Daniela Rosner is a Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington, co-director of the Tactile and Tactical Design Lab, and co-director of the HCDE Masters Program. She holds adjunct appointments in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS), the Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXArts), and the Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). She also serves as an associate member of the Einstein Center for Digital Futures in Berlin, Germany. Her work lies at the intersection of design and social science, and especially across the fields of human-computer interaction and science and technology studies. She is the author of several articles on craft and technoculture, including “The Bias Cut: Toward a Technopoetics of Algorithmic Systems” Journal of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 2022. In her book, Critical Fabulations, she investigates new ways of thinking about design’s past to rework future relationships between technology and social responsibility (MIT Press, 2018). Rosner earned her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a BFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Chicago.

Lauren Williams (she/they) is a Detroit-based designer, researcher and educator who works with visual and interactive media to understand, critique, and reimagine the ways social and economic systems distribute and exercise power over Black life and death. She currently teaches in the University of Michigan’s Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning + the Digital Studies Institute. Going forward, she’s finding ways to align her capacities with revolutionary movements that build toward different socioeconomic systems entirely and usher in new dimensions of power and freedom altogether.