Wendy Gunn: on Research as a Future Making Practice

The Human Show: Innovation through Social Science

Wendy is a researcher in the field of design anthropology whose written work, research and design practices have contributed to the foundation of what we now perceive as design anthropology. She holds an MA and a PhD in Social Anthropology both at the University of Manchester. She taught at architecture department at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. From 2005-2017 she was Associate Professor of design anthropology at University of Southern Denmark. Subsequently, she has held teaching and research positions in Australia, Belgium, USA and China. As a researcher, Wendy has cross-disciplinary expertise in design, architecture and anthropology and significant experience of conducting collaborative research as part of multidisciplinary design teams involving both public and private sectors. Central to her research is a close connection between theory and practice, research and teaching. She has developed research insights into how collaborative processes work as well as how anthropology can play an important role in design, whether in product, architectural and engineering design. Wendy’s publications explore such processes through ethnographic documentation of design experimentation and analysis of emergent properties, involving learning, imagination and cooperation.

In today’s episode we talk to Wendy about her experience of shaping design anthropology and the ways collaborative research practices in this emerging field have evolved. How does she reconcile the designer, architect and anthropologist that dwell within her? In what ways has the cross-disciplinary collaboration given Wendy strength to navigate different kinds of design processes and practices? We inquire about the challenges and difficulties that this navigation sometimes implies. We reflect on research as a future making practice and on ways of being a researcher within that space. We close with stimulating questions and a research case: how do you conduct fieldwork without actually being there? How can you as a researcher make research practices more sustainable? and how do you engage astronauts in carrying out anthropological research?

Mentioned in podcast:

Tim Ingold, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ingold

Sara Green, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Green_(anthropologist)

Sarah Pink, https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/sarah-pink

Karen Barad, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Barad

Kathleen Stewart, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/d9109

Jacob Buur, https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/en/persons/buur

Christian Clausen, https://vbn.aau.dk/en/persons/100768