At Kyushu University, I deliver lectures in Transformation Design and Academic Publishing and Dissemination. These courses are designed to equip students with the necessary skills and knowledge to navigate complex futures through the lens of art and design. By engaging in these subjects, students not only produce excellent research and high-quality academic publications, but also develop a unique perspective that allows them to creatively anticipate, plan, and shape our future worlds in collaboration with the diverse environments we encounter. Futures design needs creativity, visual design and art thinking, plurality and context-specific solutions for our societies and environment.
SARANTOU Melanie
- Social Design
- Transformation Design
- Arts-based Research
As a Professor of Social Design at the Faculty of Design, Kyushu University, I bring to the table extensive experience and expertise in social design and arts-based approaches, particularly in marginalised contexts. I am also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Lapland in Finland. My deep involvement in Namibian craft and design, spanning over two decades, included ten years of lecturing at the University of Namibia. I have conducted research on how arts and narrative practices impact marginalised communities in Namibia, Finland, Australia and Japan. As a European Commission Research Fellow (2020 – 2023), I delved into the role of arts in societies on the margins of Europe in the Horizon 2020-funded project titled ‘Action on the Margin: Arts as Social Sculpture’ (AMASS). My research and art explored concepts of marginality, which in this project was defined by conditions of isolation and migration, emphasised by geographies in the Arctic and far South. My PhD in Visual Arts at the University of South Australia mapped Namibian craft and design worlds through a postcolonial lens. I have also edited several academic books, for example, Empathy and Business Transformations (2022), published by Routledge.