NORDES 2025 is the 11th bi-annual Design Research conference.

NORDES 2025 takes up the open theme Relational Design to offer perspectives and means through which we may together investigate and discuss complex dilemmas and current responses, along with design’s futures and futures designing. Relational Design gives attention to ontological multiplicity in evolving processes of becoming and emergence. It accentuates working with possibilities, tensions, paradoxes and contradictions in re-framing and shaping resonances, alliances, linkages and networks of making and researching. Working within and across difference, Relational Design instantiates interrelations, intersections and distinctions. It facilitates non-normative, situated knowledge experimentation and its generative practices. Relational designing treasures linked, participative and dynamic agency to bring forward pragmatically viable, equitable and bearable transformative potentials and their resonant effects.

Designing and researching relationally asks us to consider the shaping of re-directive design as well as analytical and methodological frames and practices linked with values, ethics, concepts and methods centred on repair, regeneration and reinvigoration. Overall, it asks for rethinking and re-making design relationally, engagement in working with entanglements - of places, zones, values, processes and participation - that are enmeshed in living and regenerative situations, environments, systems and situated acts of worldmaking.

Submission Guidelines

All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. The following paper categories are welcome:

• Full papers category invites original and mature research and results positioned in relation to existing research literature. Full papers represent the current frontier of knowledge in the design field. Full papers may take the shape of a range of formats and thetorical styles depending on the nature and character of material presented. In this type of contribution to NORDES, we ask that authors pay especially close attention to the conference theme and to ways design inquiry may address and develop it - academically, pragmatically and professionally - through creative and critical engagement.

  Full Papers are limited to maximum of 10 pages when using the specified template (excluding abstract and references). Please limit the file size to 5 MB or less, use the relevant NORDES template and follow its guidelines for preparing your submission.

  When accepted for review each submission will receive a minimum of two peer- reviews addressing strengths, weaknesses, originality, and significance of the submission. If the submission is accepted for publication, authors are expected to adopt suggested improvements as noted by reviewers and the conference programme committee. A final submission must be fully language edited.

• Exploratory Papers category functions as a channel through which emergent research topics and approaches may be investigated before becoming acknowledged or established in the broader design research community. They are shorter, limited to max 3000 words and not exceeding 5 MB.

  Here we invite submissions in forms such as, but not limited to, design cases, design fictions, design critiques, pictorials, annotated portfolios, as well as more traditional short papers. Whether text-driven or visual, submissions will differ in format because each seeks the most effective way of presenting an intended contribution to the theme and research community. A submission needs to connect its purpose, argument, claims and design work, together with the mode of inquiry selected. While exploratory, this is still a research paper category. Submissions must refer closely to the conference theme and include a clearly communicated topic, questions and supporting design-based research linked to clear methods, hopefully, with strong foundation in empirical data. We encourage authors to investigate existing and novel concepts in the search for new theoretical openings, possibly drawing new linkages between nearby disciplines.

• Workshops will run for a maximum of 3 hours. Workshop proposals need 2 components: a Workshop Description and a Practical Overview. The Workshop Description frames the direction of the exploration, its significance and relevance, as well as the research basis for the workshop. The Workshop Description will be included in the Nordes 2025 Proceedings as a peer-reviewed publication. Following the related NORDES paper template, a Workshop Written Description must be a maximum of 3 pages (excluding abstract and references) and not exceed 5 MB.

  The Practical Overview is submitted in addition to the Workshop Description. This provides a summary of the practicalities for running the workshop. Please include in the overview the workshop title; motivation; length of the workshop (we suggest a half day or a full day); a tentative programme; a minimum and maximum number of participants; anything participants need to bring; preferred set-up (including space, equipment, supplies, etc.); support needed (technology, materials or other assistance). Please note how you will deal with any related ethical issues, consent and data privacy. The submission will also be evaluated as to whether it can be achieved practically, so this element of the submission needs to be carefully prepared.

• Exhibition category is open for submission of artifacts of various types (physical, digital, prosessual, performances, posters etc) that must be accompanied by an explanatory and notational and analytical research framed text (maximum 3000 words excluding abstract and references). All contributions to this category of Design Research Exhibitions must be fully formed, whether conceptual or completed. All costs for shipping and main materials are to be covered by contributors. Curating will be selective and devised by a dynamic on-site team.

• Doctoral Consortium is open to doctoral researchers. In contrast to other categories, the NORDES Doctoral Consortium (DC) offers PhD students a full-day, on-site and dedicated space for sharing and discussing design research work-in- progress and for learning and engaging fellow students and established researchers. The event follows the main conference so that doctoral candidates may draw on experiences, insights and dialogues from the wider NORDES community.

  The DC is a venue that works with specific doctoral research projects and positions them in the wider regional and international contexts of design research. The DC supports the generative character of doctoral research and contributes to shaping topics, themes, perspectives, content and methods, along with building networks between students and with larger research projects and institution. The DC also functions as an arena for rehearsal and preparation of material for research publication. Supervisors are welcome to attend.

   

List of Topics

• Re-think and re-work design researching
• Pragmatic, political and creative-critical characteristics of a linked, relational, re-positioned design
• Decolonise roles and relations providing context-rich alternatives, plural perspectives and multiple mediational formats
• Socially, technically and ecologically responsible design
• Regenerative futures
• Temporal and spatial intersections and relations that support shaping creative, multimodal and transductive design literacies
• Topics related to designing for supporting relations

Committees

General Chairs

• Alma Leora Culén (almira@uio.no)
• Laurence Habib
• Andrew David Morrison

Program committee

• Papers: Alma Culén, Einar Sneve Martinussen, Nevad Pavel, Minna Pikkarainen, Heather Wiltse
• Exploratory Papers: Joanna Boehnert, Enrique Encinas, Astrid Marie Heimer, Henry Mainsah, Laura Popplow, Nicolas Torretta
• Workshops: Angeliki Dimaki-Adolfsen, Onkar Kular, Vibeke Sjøvoll, Mari Suoheimo, Danielle Wilde, Signe Louise Yndigegn, Christina Zetterlund
• Exgibits: Arild Berg, Nicholas Stevens, Einar Stoltenberg, Joshi Suhas
• Doctoral Consortium: Martina Čaić, Sisse Finken, Maria Göransdotter, Julia Jacoby, Satu Miettinen, Josina Vink

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to chairs of relevant sumbission categories.