Rachel C. Smith is Associate Professor at the Dept. of Digital Design and Information Studies at Aarhus University. Her research focuses on social transformations and futures between digital technology and everyday life, through fields of Design Anthropology, Participatory Design, and Human-Computer Interaction. Through long-term international research projects, she engages with exploring and shaping everyday practices and human digital futures in diverse contexts such as; emerging technologies in future educational practices, future mobility in urban environments, and the transformation of memory practices and digital heritage in everyday life and cultural institutions.
Her research contributes to the development of Design Anthropology as an academic transdisciplinary field through edited volumes: Design Anthropology (2022), Design Studies, The Interdisciplinary Journal of Design Research; Design Anthropological Futures (2016), Routledge; Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice (2013), Bloomsbury; and the international Research Network for Design Anthropology, as well as Participatory Design and HCI: Participatory Design (2021), Morgan Claypool Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics; Participatory Design in an Era of Participation (2017), CoDesign, International Journal of CoCreation and the Arts, Vol. 13; Design Anthropology in Participatory Design (2015), IxD&A International Journal for Interaction Design and Architecture, Vol. 26; Digital Fabrication in Education (2015), International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, Vol. 5.
She currently leads research and societal impact on computational empowerment, digital inclusiveness and democracy in the future of education in the research project CEED Computational Empowerment for Emerging Technologies in Education, VILLUM/VELUX Foundations (2020-2024) at the interdisciplinary Research Center for Computational Thinking and Design CCTD. In addition, she partners several international research projects on human digital futures: POEM Participatory Memory Practices: Concepts, Practices, and Media Infrastructures for Social Inclusion, Horizon 2020, Innovative Training Network, Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) (2018-2022), AHA Design Ethnographic Living Labs for Future Urban Mobility: A Human Approach, VINNOVA Sweden (2019-2022), and DCODE Fundamentals of Design Competence for our Digital Future, Horizon 2020, Innovative Training Network, Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) (2021-2024).
