Emilija Veselova

Aalto University · Department of Design

Collaborative and participatory design (C&PD) is an area of design theory and practice in which designers involve project stakeholders as active participants to jointly explore and frame problems and to co-create solutions. In response to increasingly more pressing sustainability challenges, C&PD scholarship has been engaged in rethinking the premi...

Kombucha fermentation is a multispecies activity guided by human-microbe interactions. This study investigates kombucha fermentation practices as a platform to recognize relationality with nonhuman microbes. For this, relational theories enable reframing human-microbe relations by focusing on reciprocity and interconnectedness within multispecies r...

Addressing the current unsustainability of socio-ecological-technological systems is urgently required. Unsustainability has been associated with the anthropocentric cultures of human societies that focus on their own needs while ignoring and belittling the needs of other species and natural systems. Design, including collaborative and participator...

When a tree is also a multispecies collective, a photosynthesis process and a carbon cycle A systemic typology of natural nonhuman stakeholders when designing for sustainability Emīlija Veselova and İdil Gaziulusoy Design research and practice is increasingly aware of the sustainability crisis. Various initiatives have started to argue for a need t...

This position paper presents a prototype research agenda for design for sustainability transformations (DfST) in the (post-)pandemic context. COVID-19 has made visible vulnerabilities, structural dysfunctions, inequalities and injustices across health, environmental, social, economic, provisional and political systems. In response to the crisis, ra...

This paper focuses on the connections and resonances between an ethical and philosophical concept of care and service design. The paper contributes, on one hand, to discussions on service design seen as a dynamic discipline that addresses relations and responsibilities when shaping our futures. On the other, it highlights the concept of care in our...

Humanity must rapidly transition towards sustainable futures. Reaching planetary sustainability requires care for nature and radical transformation of human-made systems. Human and natural systems co-exist in extensive, complex, multi-layered entanglement. Design for sustainability and, ultimately, all design, will need to be transformed towards de...

To address the current unsustainability of socio-technical-ecological systems, humanity and design should increasingly consider the needs of natural entities. This paper outlines initial considerations for nature-inclusive Collaborative and Participatory Design (C&PD) by critically questioning the approach through the perspective of a bioinclusive...