We are looking for a PhD student in Industrial Design to join us. This is a time-limited position (4 years’ full time, in practice 5 years with 20% teaching). Last day to apply is 2016-09-01.

Description of position

The primary objective of our research is to develop the design discipline by extending its existing practices and forming its future foundations. We aim to be at the forefront of addressing how design can, and needs to, evolve in response to changes in our social, technical and ecological contexts.

This PhD position is part of this effort, and as we value diverse perspectives it is thematically open with respect to what issues and areas to engage with. Considering contemporary and historical challenges of design research, however, some issues emerge: the need for a more sustainable development calls for addressing how design practices can be redirected; post-industrial changes to patterns of production and consumption call for a change in design from being oriented towards use and user, towards instead addressing the social in a much broader sense; networked and computational technologies altering the ways things are made and shared, even becoming new infrastructures for design. Just to name a few challenges to design.

And most of all, we want to engage in research on what could become, working with practices of making and design experimentation that can give material form to imaginative, hopeful speculations on diverse design futures.

With this position we also aim to strengthen the critical dimension in teaching in the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes, and thus part of this position is also dedicated to participating in teaching in our programmes and courses at UID. We believe that critical and inclusive perspectives are necessary components in the development of the conceptual foundations and future practices of industrial design. This PhD position is part of our ongoing efforts to contribute to furthering the development of such perspectives

http://uid.umu.se/en/about-us/job-opportunities/phd-position-in-industrial-design/