TDI Researchers

Alisha’s research interests focus on Transition Design, systems thinking, and institutional transformation. She is particularly interested in how capacity building and capability development within low-income communities can inform systemic strategies to address complex, wicked problems at the institutional level.

Josh explores how humanitarian practice might better reflect and respond to complexity by embracing design, particularly with regard to problem framing. How do practitioners arrive at a problem definition? How might we make legible and improve boundary negotiation?

As a doctoral researcher, Saurin Nanavati builds on more than two decades of experience designing and scaling sustainability initiatives across the global coffee sector. His research weaves together systems thinking, pluriversal design, and sustainability education to reimagine the role of universities as catalysts for social and environmental justice—using coffee as a platform for systems change and collective impact.

Luis’ research examines contradictions when designing for transitions in local contexts, emphasizing the interplay between designers, their positionality, the communities they engage with, and the systems they inhabit. Through participatory workshops, dialogues with change-makers, and autoethnography, I advocate for equitable, context-sensitive interventions.

Fas’ research positions “design” as an active force in shaping mineral trajectories, demonstrating that mineral systems are designed, choreographed, and contested spaces shaped by worldviews, agency, and power structures over time. This work serves as a pioneering primer that establishes a new domain of inquiry at the intersection of Design, the extractive sector, and sustainability transitions.

Will’s research examines how collective efficacy emerges through everyday interactions between neighbors and the places that satisfy their fundamental needs. Using geospatial and network analysis, I explore how spatial constraints and social ties shape urban resilience, cooperation, and well-being.

Matthew Wizinsky’s dissertation “Design & Postcapitalist Desire” comprised multiple projects exploring how UX and service design can help shift social practices from unsustainable forms of consumption to localized, networked, and commons-based peer production. This included studies with professional designers and public workshops for building technologies such as hydroponic and carbon sequestration systems. Wizinsky is an Associate Professor of Urban Technology at the University of Michigan.

Erica Dorn is an Assistant Professor of Design and Innovation at Oregon State University. Her current research pursues relational design practices with a focus on civic innovation spaces, including governance redesign efforts in Portland, Oregon, and resident-led civic house parties in Aurora, Colorado.

Sofia’s research explores systemic innovation and networked governance, and employs design-led participatory approaches to foster access to public services and programs, particularly for communities at the periphery of political, policy, and governance processes.

Marysol is a designer, researcher, embroiderer, and educator. She works at the intersection of design, embroidery, and adjacent arts-based practices, engaging in ways-of-being as designers who care for relations—both human and more-than-human—as pathways to addressing today's multiple social-ecological crises.

Silvana's research is about nurturing wise and equitable transformations through transdisciplinarity and co-creativity, especially concerning food systems. She is the co-coordinator of the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS) Transition Lab (Uruguay), and is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Stockholm Resilience Centre (Sweden)