RE:DESIGN – Guest Lecture on “Design Otherwise: Transforming Design Education in the Arab Region” by Danah Abdulla

Monday, October 6, 2025 from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm

• In-person event
• 450 (Gallery), Azrieli Pavilion, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

• Contact
• Tammy Tracey, ID@carleton.ca, 6135205672

How can we study and teach design in a way that is critical, socially engaged, and relevant to place? In her latest book, Design Otherwise: Transforming Design Education in the Arab Region, Danah Abdulla challenges us to imagine a design education and culture that moves beyond blindly borrowing Eurocentric models and frameworks.

Drawing on learnings from work with design students, educators and designers in the Arab region, with a particular focus on Jordan and featuring examples from Lebanon, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, Abdulla creates a dialogue with those who have most at stake in education to imagine how we can develop a collaborative, contextually based and socially relevant design education.

This RE:DESIGN event will feature a short presentation of the key themes of the book, followed by an in-conversation part with Chiara Del Gaudio (Associate Professor at the School of Industrial Design) and the audience.