Afield Gives Parsons & New School African Borders Seminar

We immensely enjoyed taking part in a seminar today hosted by Parsons School of Design at the New School for Social Research.

Asked to think about race and the postcolonial, as well as to consider the way that design and social science might help to rethink migration and borders, we presented the latest version of our project titled “Surviving a Massive Refugee Situation: A Political Manual for Designers.” Our presentation—reflecting hybrid practice and with a posthumanist and speculative edge—looked at migration on the Mozambique-South Africa border as site of migrations all textured by climate (change) and “Big Sugar” capital.

The Parsons/New School seminar is a Sawyer Seminar funded by a $225,000 grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Faculty members Fiona Raby and Miriam Ticktin are key contacts for the two-year grant supporting the seminar. For sure, Parsons/New School will be the place where rigorous and innovative social science and design meet to address concerns of local and global significance—all made possible by substantial grants and other external funding.

More detail on the seminar can be found here.