The 3-year Gendered Design in STEAM Program concluded Tuesday 4 October 2022 with a virtual summative closing event.
Starting in 2019, the Gendered Design in STEAM (GDS) project has been investigating and advancing gendered design through 20 grant-awarded projects with scholars at institutions across the global souths. The program aimed to contribute to more inclusive technological designs in science, technology, engineering, the arts and math by building capacity in gendered design and innovations.
The GDS program was led by principal investigators Bjarki Hallgrimsson, Associate Professor in the School of Industrial Design, and Dominique Marshall Professor in the History Department. Chiara Del Gaudio, Assistant Professor in the School of Industrial Design, is the program’s investigator and Kerry Grace is the program coordinator.
The awarded scholars worked in a variety of STEM fields with a common goal to identify and overcome gender bias and tackle issues especially affecting women in Lower-and-Middle-Income countries (LMIC). The scholars were encouraged to use participatory design in their research to bring diverse and critical perspectives to address gender issues by including the affected population (often women) directly in their project, reshaping how design challenges and solutions are addressed.
The GDS Program, centrally managed and coordinated by Carleton University, was made possible by a $1.1million grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
For the first year, a call for expression of interest and proposal submission was executed. Following the award announcement in September 2020, Carleton University centrally lead and coordinated a hub of activities to explore, build knowledge and advance gendered design thinking. Activities for the awarded scholars included multi-day workshops that: encouraged networking and collaborative discoveries; explored the interconnection between power, design, and gender; and investigated the prototyping aspects of the research projects evolving the notion of what prototypes are and how they can be used. Information and knowledge sharing were enhanced with the release of a GDS Bulletin.
The Program was supported by 10 interdisciplinary experts, 15 Research Assistants, four RA Coordinators and a gender expert based at Carleton University throughout the Program, in collaboration with the expertise and knowledge of three Regional Experts for Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Despite delays and ongoing challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Program and the 20 project teams were able to adapt, learn and continue with research activities.
The achievements were celebrated at a closing event hosted from campus at Carleton with academic partners attending virtually. A series of short videos, created by RAs from Carleton, on each of the projects were watched together.
Learn more about the GDS Program and the funded research projects.
Bjarki Hallgrimsson“It has been an awarding and humbling experience to work with the 20 projects spread out over the world. The enthusiasm shown by our colleagues in Africa, Latin America and Asia is clearly indicative of how important community-oriented STEAM work with a focus on Gender is. This project has not only mobilized a strong collaboration between academics and communities in the Northern and Southern hemispheres alone; it has created an opportunity for researchers across the Carleton campus to work together with a common goal and for students to do truly interdisciplinary work across four Faculties.”
Dominique Marshall “We tried to keep the definitions of “gender” and of “design” wide open from the start and watched how university colleagues handled these notions across disciplines, geographical areas, together with the extraordinary local communities with whom they partnered.”
Click on image below to view downloadable PDF of Final GDS Report poster
