In April 2023, the MRes Design (2020/2021) alumni Alexandra Matz, Michael Peter, Xin Wu, Yanning Zheng together with their former supervisor and MRes Design lead, Dr. Laura Ferrarello, presented their research at the ‘Care/Inclusivity’ track of the Cumulus 2023 conference for Design and Artistic Research.
Their contribution is entitled “The Food Delivery Industry and its Lack of Care in Gender Equality: The Speculative Case of 'GiGi’" and used design futuring methods to envision possible solutions to improve the work situation of women working in the food delivery industry.
The authors drew on their work originally developed during the Grand Challenge 2021/2022 activities at the RCA, then refined their submission in late 2022 which then was accepted through a double-blind peer review process.
As a representative of the research group, Alexandra presented the research in-person in Antwerp and was also invited to be a reviewer and to chair one session. The presentation sparked a high interest in the group’s methodology and saw a vivid post-session discussion with good and valuable feedback as well as potential for further research.
The paper is available via the proceedings linked on the conference website https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/conferences/cumulus/.
The MRes Alumni's conference presentation title slide with title and authors (left) and two images (right) showing example artefacts of the research process: (a) characteristics of a future solution that the team proposed (“GiGi aims to tackle”) and (b) a very early visualization of how a proposed “GiGi Hub” concept could look like.
