Research Colloquia: Design, Data, and the Politics of Sustainability Indexes with Simona Gumtau

Join us on 21 October, 2026 in Studio 3 at 11:00

What role can design play in shaping a more sustainable and equitable world? This Research Colloquium explores the tensions between design’s commercial roots and social design practices that challenge extractive and oppressive systems. Through a critical look at how data is used to measure sustainability, the talk asks what these representations reveal, what they obscure, and how design might offer more situated, relational ways of understanding social and planetary wellbeing.

Abstract:  

The talk will map the global systems relevant to sustainable development and pose questions about the designer’s role within these societal transformations. The historical positioning of design as serving capitalist forces and commercial interests will be set alongside efforts radically opposed to those forces: an emerging repertoire of social design practices built to challenge global extractive, resource-hungry and oppressive practices. 

Through the example of data-driven indexes designed to visualize progress within the sustainability transformation, a critical data lens will be applied to unpack what these quantified, comparative representations include, exclude and obscure. What might a more situated, relational way of designing and tracking social and planetary wellbeing look like? 

About Simone Gumtau:

For two decades I have moved between disciplines and modes of engagement: academic research, teaching and supervision, art-science, exhibition and publication, installation and interaction design. I am now based in Hamburg, developing an independent artistic practice focused on critical data art and public engagement, and contributing to the transformation of higher education towards sustainability through interdisciplinary learning, art-based methods and data driven approaches.