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WITH THE SPACE ODYSSEY METAPHOR I SEE A NINTENDO
MARIO-LIKE PHD CANDIDATE BOUNCING AROUND THE SOLAR
SYSTEM — EQUAL PARTS LIGHT SPEED TRAVELLER,
ASTRONAUT, AND DOMESTIC TOURIST.

If I start with the why will you listen? If I use
well worn words like systemic/intractable/
wicked problems will you pay attention or roll
your eyes? When I claim that today we face
transdisciplinary challenges that cannot be
solved by one discipline alone will you nod
knowingly or sigh? Of course you already
know this line of thinking because we are
all living it. We experience everyday the
complexity of the challenges in front of us and
bear witness to how our local problems are not
isolated from the pressing global issues of our
time. From climate change to food security,
from access to basic healthcare and education
to income inequality and ecological sustain-
ability, designers are increasingly exploring
the role of design in mitigating the negative
impact of our 21st century challenges. The
question for design may not be one of compla-
cency or urgency but perhaps it is one of agency.
So let’s start there. The value Monash (my
university) places on making evident the agency
of design is inseparable from our motivation to
prepare a new generation of researchers who
can tackle systemic problems. We are curious
about how we might develop a research edu-
cation that examines and enacts the agency
of design so that we might confidently, with
humility, assert what design brings to interdis-
ciplinary collaborations.

Is this too abstract? We could start somewhere
else. Would you listen more closely if I begin with
an anecdote about the Laughing Yogi? My 6am
accidental meeting with the yogi on the deso-
late Lazy Ranch Road out of Palm Springs makes
for a good story. Not just bizarre and memorable-
although it was both of those things- but poignant
and relevant. The yogi’s lifetime dedication to
teaching people how to laugh wholeheartedly

is at the heart of a provocative tale where con-
ventional wisdom is confronted by cultural bias.
I can even make the case for how the contesta-
tion between our personal beliefs, our everyday
practices and our institutional contexts makes
the story resonate beyond my anecdotal experi-
ence. But engagement is a fickle thing and even
the yogi knew that his tale of embodied knowing
is best supported by biological and neurological
scientific evidence. He understood that for me
to hear his message of transformation my phe-
nomenological experience of learning how to
laugh (turns out I’d been laughing the wrong
way) had to be made sense of, put into context.

I am guessing that you think nothing of my
offer of multiple entry points into this paper
because you appreciate a panoramic perspective.
As designers we like to toggle between global
abstractions and situated experiences. There
is no tension in this piece being as much about
design agency and design research as it is about
a week at a Californian dude ranch. Sense-
making for a designer is about reconciling the
incommensurable. The (un)disciplined designer
is not wedded to one way of making sense and
is in fact open to synthesizing data points from
multiple sources. Tracing connections between
stories and numbers, theories and patterns,
artifacts and experiences allows the designer
to negotiate the space between evidence and
emergence. This is how design moves from what
we know to what might be.

Sohere, in this piece, I negotiate two entwined
ambitions. First there is a social and intellectual
commitment for designers to play their part
in tackling the complex challenges of this
century. Second it is a cultural and pedagogical
commitment to co-design with a community the
kind of doctoral education needed to prepare

design researchers to do this work. The first
takes a global perspective that these challenges
are best addressed by multiple disciplines. The
assumption here is that the agency of design
will be amplified if the researcher understands
the integrative contribution design expertise
brings to other disciplines. In return it helps
to complement the limitations of design by
respecting others disciplinary expertise. This
informs the second more local commitment
to create a new design PhD. This time the
assumption is that engaging design allies in
the shaping of the program will sharpen our
perception of what design is and could be.

This is how twenty-two people from Europe,
the Americas, India and the Asia-Pacific came
to meet up at a dude ranch. We were there for
the initial phase of co-creating a doctoral degree
that educates designers for interdisciplinary
research. Our goal was for this future PhD to
illuminate and focus the contribution of
design in collaborations with other disciplines.
Gathered together were a mix of potential
doctoral supervisors and candidates who
although invested in design came from a range
of disciplinary backgrounds from performance
studies, education, humanities and neurosci-
ence. Intentionally the invited participants
represented a breadth of methodological
approaches from participatory action research
to auto-ethnography and from fields such as
social justice and creative technologies. The
week-long event was conceived of and funded by
the Design Department and Monash University.

The Australian context, Monash values and
department beliefs had determined an initial
commitment to a project-grounded, collab-
orative, pop-up PhD. The project-grounded
focus defines an approach to design-led