Göteborgs universitet
  2. Om universitetet
  3. Hitta person
  4. Ulises Navarro Aguiar

Ulises Navarro Aguiar

Universitetslektor

Enheten för Design
E-post
ulises.navarro.aguiar@gu.se
Besöksadress
Kristinelundsgatan 6-8
Göteborg
Postadress
Box 131
40530 Göteborg

Om Ulises Navarro Aguiar

I work as a researcher and lecturer at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design. My scholarly work explores questions around the relation of design to social and economic life, crossing disciplinary boundaries between design studies, organization studies, and STS-infused economic sociology.

One line of research I have been pursuing investigates the growing entanglement of design practice with cultures of financialization in organizations and economies, and how this affects the way design labour is valued and managed. Here I have also been studying how this entanglement manifests in the manner in which design approaches have come to be seen as an alluring means of future making in organizations, advancing speculation as a core logic to imagine and crystallize representations of "the future" with its accompanying "risks" and "yields." Another line of research of mine (explored to an important extent in my pedagogical practice) inquires into how design (practiced otherwise) can contribute to redirective efforts towards alternative forms of strategizing and organizing in and between organizations in the face of deep-seated economic inequalities and ecological unravelling.

Taking together these two lines of inquiry, my research operates on the dual registers of denaturalizing 'business as usual' in the field of design by critically analyzing the current order of things, and articulating alternatives for understanding and using design beyond modern fantasies of innovation. My research has been published in Valuation Studies, ephemera: theory and politics in organization, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Swedish Design Research Journal, and International Planning Studies.

I have a background in industrial and strategic design (BA in Industrial Design from Tecnológico de Monterrey & MSc in Design Management from the University of Salford), and hold a doctoral degree in organization studies from the University of Gothenburg funded through a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship (2012-2015) within the DESMA project.

Links