Director
Chiara Del Gaudio
Chiara Del Gaudio is a designer, researcher, and instructor in Design. She is Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator at Carleton University’s School of Industrial Design. She holds a Ph.D. in Design from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, an MSc in Design & Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, and a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from the same institution. She has been teaching Design at both undergraduate and graduate levels in Brazil and Canada, and she has been a Visiting Professor in Italy and the US. Her education and practice, teaching, and research experience bring elements from Strategic and Participatory Design, together with a Critical Design Studies perspective, and knowledge on the design of processes, systems, services and products. After working as a product and service designer, her design practice has mainly focused on Design’s social and political dimensions in projects at the intersection between the university and local communities.
She has been working on applied design research projects addressing more democratic, inclusive and sustainable urban contexts, design processes and outcomes. Since 2014, she has also worked as a strategic consultant for small service and innovation enterprises in Brazil and, more recently, in Canada.
Current
Research Assistants
Maya Chopra
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Maya Chopra ·
Maya holds a Master's in Design from Carleton University. Her thesis, Counteracting Dominant Design Through Intersectional Feminist Thought, examines how dominant and exclusionary design practices operate within systems of power, how these practices maintain experiences of privilege and oppression, and how they might be challenged through a systematic implementation of intersectional feminist thought in design processes.
She is currently working as a research assistant for the Urban Imaginaries Lab. Her research interests focus on the concept of intersectionality and how design can act as a catalyst for societal change.
David E. Cabrera Zapata
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David E. Cabrera Zapata ·
David is a design student from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. He is the recipient of a Mitacs Globalink Research Internship at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He defines himself as a specialized generalist, with a comprehensive background in design as a participatory, discursive, and project-based discipline.
His interests center around design research, storytelling, and graphic communication. He’s profoundly passionate about speculative design; inspired by how it opens spaces for collective, critical, and imaginative thinking.
Graduate Students
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Maria Paula Choque
MASTER in DESIGN
Maria Paula is in the first year of the Master in Design at Carleton University. Her research focuses on the intersection of entrepreneurship, cultural identity, and gender. She hopes to center her work in interdisciplinary approaches that bridge business and community needs, using design to foster innovation and inclusivity.
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Yi Luo
MASTER in DESIGN
Yi is in the first year of her Master in Design at Carleton University. She is investigating the significance of shared experiences, concerns, and needs in designing online communities for women.
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Anna Verhoeven
MASTER in DESIGN (Graduated in 2023)
Anna graduated from Carleton University’s School of Industrial Design with a Master's in Design. Her thesis, Envisioning post-apocalictic futures: A speculative Design Toolkit for non-designers, discusses the applications of speculative design within a non-design context, examining the potential of speculative design as a medium in expressing post-apocalyptic environmentalist visions of the future.
Previous Research Assistants
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Najeeba Ahmed
MASTER in DESIGN
Najeeba Ahmed (they/them) is a graphic/web designer, and artist. They were a graduate student at Carleton University. With experience working for environmental, gender-based, and indigenous grassroot organizations, they are particularly interested in understanding how different worldviews can shape design processes and open new opportunities for engaging underrepresented stakeholders. Currently, their research interest revolves around the relationship between situated futurities and craft practices in Bangladesh.
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Ona Bantjes-Ràfols
MASTER in HISTORY
Ona Bantjes-Ràfols holds a Master's in History with a Specialization in Digital Humanities from Carleton University, and her thesis explored histories of queer space and memory in 1970s Barcelona. She was a Research Assistant Coordinator for the Gendered Design in STEAM Project at Carleton University, a Research Assistant for Dr Jennifer Evans, and worked as Research Assistant for the Embracing Transgression in Design project led by Dr. Chiara del Gaudio, focusing especially on queer creativity in videogames. She received funding by Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and she lives and works in the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg people.
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Brianna McGregor
BACHELOR in INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Brianna McGregor graduated from the Bachelor in Industrial Design at Carleton University in spring of 2022. She is interested in designing products, services and systems that bring meaning to everyday life, and exploring how design can help uplift communities. She has experience designing housewares and consumer electronics through internship positions she has held throughout her degree. She worked as a research assistant for the Urban Imaginaries Ottawa project, the A5 work in progress project, and she was also a designer for a Carleton-based club, Creator’s Corner, designing branding and graphic assets for non-profit organizations.
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Amélie Houle
BACHELOR in INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Amélie is graduate from Carleton University’s School of Industrial Design, completing a minor in Technology, Society, Environment Studies too. Social and accessible design, specifically centered around environmental and ethical sustainability, inform her design priorities, and make up her primary design interests. During her time as a research assistant at Carleton University, she has worked on a variety of projects that have allowed her to grow her skill set and awareness as a designer. This has included projects exploring gendered and political design, accessibility in the fields of engineering and design, and multi-sensory approaches to design in education.
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Yasmine Butlin-Legras
MASTER in DESIGN
Yasmine is in the second year of her Master in Design at Carleton University. Currently her research interest involves strategic design, design ethics, organizations, and employees’ activism.
