On November 12th at 16:00 (EET), Azeem Hamid’s third doctoral peer review, Participation as Relation: Negotiating agency within, upon, and without a site, will take place online via Zoom.
Zoom link (Meeting ID: 698 5473 4970, Passcode: 184004).
The peer reviewers are Dr. Sofie Kinch (Design School Kolding, Denmark) and Dr. Oscar Tomico (Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands). The thesis supervisors are Dr. Kristi Kuusk (Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia) and Dr. Nithikul Nimkulrat (OCAD University, Canada).
Azeem Hamid invites attendees to engage with the analysis and reflections arising from a site-responsive participatory design workshop conducted in Kopli, Tallinn. As the third case study of his ongoing doctoral research, the study examines how agency is shaped through relations among participants, place, materials, and more-than-human conditions.
Through playful and speculative prompts, participants explored how the neighbourhood might be perceived, inhabited, or influenced beyond an exclusively human point of reference. The study identifies perceptual reorientation, infrastructures of control, and material interruption as ways in which place shaped participation. It further examines three overlapping modes—being with-in, acting upon, and continuing without a site, through which relations and responsibilities changed across and beyond the workshop.
The research proposes site-based interruption as a lens for reflecting on moments when place redirects intended design activity and makes habits of control perceptible. It contributes to relational and more-than-human participatory design by considering how agency is negotiated through situated encounters rather than simply assigned to human or nonhuman participants.
Azeem Hamid, originally from Lahore, Pakistan and now based in Tallinn, is a design researcher, educator, and facilitator focusing on transition design, placemaking, and design pedagogy. He is a doctoral student at the Estonian Academy of Arts and holds an MSc in Design and Technology Futures and an MPhil in Art and Design Education (Research).