Public peer-review of Azeem Hamid’s doctoral study

On February 3rd, 2026 at 19:00 Azeem Hamid’s doctoral study second peer-review “Participation as Relation: Designing Relations of Care” will take place online on zoom.
The peer-reviewers are Dr. Oscar Tomico Plasencia (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands) and Dr. Jesper Falck Legaard (Designskolen Kolding, Denmark).
The thesis supervisors are Dr. Kristi Kuusk (EKA, Estonia) and Dr. Nithikul Nimkulrat (OCAD U, Canada).

Azeem Hamid invites attendees to engage with analysis and reflections from the Remote Grandparents project, the second case study of his ongoing doctoral research. The study explores participation as a relational and care-led design practice in remote, intergenerational contexts, focusing on sensorial play co-designed by children and their geographically distant grandparents.
Grounded in research-through-design, relational sensitivities, and autoethnographic practice, the inquiry challenges participation as co-presence by attending to distance, domestic settings, and family relations. The research identifies affective distance, sensory touchpoints, and improvised mutual shaping as key constructs through which relations are formed across people, materials, and places.
The research contributes to ethical and reflexive approaches to participatory and intergenerational design, by proposing vocabulary and methods for sensorial co-presence in distributed, care-centred contexts.
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 a MSc. in Design and Technology Futures alongwith MPhil. in Art & Design Education (Research).