Johanna Mehl
© Michaela Büsse
Doctoral Fellow
NameJohanna Mehl M.A.
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Johanna Mehl (she/her) is a PhD candidate in cultural studies and design history at TU Dresden, where she holds a Saxon State fellowship and a research associate position at the Chair for Digital Cultures. As a scholar, designer, and educator she is interested in design as a knowledge culture and its entanglements with environmental history, cybernetics, systems theory, and media theory. She holds a B.A. in Communication Design from the Niederrhein University of Applied Science and an M.A. in Art and Design Studies from the University of the Arts Folkwang, Essen. Besides her artistic and curatorial practice, she has taught in the fields of digital media, culture studies, and design theory and history at various design schools across Europe. She is an editorial board member of the Design+Posthumanism Network and part of the research group Against Catastrophe.
| since Oct 2023 |
Doctoral Fellow |
| since Mar 2022 | Research Associate TU Dresden |
| 2021-2022 |
Lecturer Critical Theory |
| 2020-2022 |
Lecturer Media Studies |
| 2017-2021 | MA Program Assistant / Lecturer
Köln International School of Design |
- Dissertation Project: The World as a Design Problem
- DGTF (German Society for Design Research and Theory) Confernce 2025 Planetary Experiments: Environments by Design
| 2024 |
Leakage |
| 2024 |
Extractive Pasts, Sustainable Futures? |
| 2022 |
Against Catastrophe: Energy Dispatch |
| 2021 |
Attending [to] Futures. Matters of Politics in Design Education, Research, Practice |
| 2021 |
Planetary Reversal. Utopian Alternatives to Anthropocentrism |
| 2020 | Critical Futures Lecture Series University of the Arts, Bremen |
Mehl, Johanna. "Super Kids. A Critical History of Design Labs in the Anthropocene." Spector Books, forthcoming 2025
Mehl, Johanna. "Not Another Shelter. Traps of Solutionism in Humanitarian Design." Transcipt, forthcoming 2025
Mehl, Johanna. "Something Wicked This Way Comes. A Problematic Paradigm for Design in Times of Crisis." in: Ibach, M., Augsten, A., & Vogelsang, A. (Eds.). (2024). What could possibly go wrong? – Impact and Consequences in Design. TUDpress. 10.25368/2024.DGTF.
Mehl, Johanna und Carolin Höfler (editors). Attending [to] Futures. Matters of Politics in Design Education, Research & Practice. adocs, 2023.
Mehl, Johanna. "Exposing the Power Grid. Exercises in Energy Literacy." Energy Dispatch, Against Catastrophe, Nov 2022, https://againstcatastrophe.net/energydispatchblog/mehl, Accessed Feb 23, 2023.
Mehl, Johanna und Moritz Ingwersen (editors). Energy Dispatch, Against Catastrophe, Nov 2022, https://againstcatastrophe.net/editorialenergy, Accessed Feb 23, 2023.
Mehl, Johanna. "Roadmap to the Unforeseen". The Dynamic Archive. 03 Issue 1., 2021.
Book Review: Mehl, Johanna. "From Utopia to Pluriverse". Simon Spiegel, Andrea Reiter, and Marcy Goldberg, editors. Utopia and Reality: Documentary, Activism and Imagined Worlds. Wales UP, 2020. 304 pp.
Mehl, Johanna. The Passionate Knower. Sensing and Translating Knowledge. The Dynamic Archive, 2020.
Book Review: Mehl, Johanna. "Invisible Women – Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men". Designabilities Design Research Journal, (4), 2020.
| July 2024 |
Invited Lecture: Imaginations of ‘humanness’ in the context of refugee camps |
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| Mai 2024 |
Invited Lecture: A New Dark Age or a Brighter Future? — What Design Can, Can’t, or Should Do |
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| April 2024 |
Talk: Something Wicked This Way Comes. |
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Nov 2023 |
Talk: Not Another Shelter. Contested Histories of Design Responses to Crisis. |
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| August 2023 |
Workshop: Weirding the Garden. Critical Co-Fabulations |
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| July 2023 |
Invited Lecture: Cyborg Troubles. Ecological Design and the Technological Fix |
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| June 2021 |
Lecutre: Designing-With. Intro to Anthropocentrism through Design |
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| June 2021 | Talk: Making in/visible. The City as a Hybrid Space. University of Cologne |
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| April 2021 | Panelist: Didn‘t We Come for Something Completely Different? A Series of Round Tables on the New Normal at Art and Design Universities, Hochschule für Künste, Bremen (online) |
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| June 2020 | Talk: Speculative Cities. Architectural Climatic Imaginaries for an Uncertain Future. DGTF Symposium, Design Promoviert (online) |
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| June 2020 | Talk: Whatever the City is made of. Architectural Imaginaries For A New Urban Morphology SLSAeu Conference, Anthropocenes – Reworking the Wound (online) |
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| Aug 2019 | Opening lecture: We Are Here – Urbane Kunst und der öffentliche Raum WE ARE HERE Gruppenausstellung, Düsseldorf |
| ST 2023 | 2023|1973: Age of Radical Uncertainty TU Dresden |
| WT 2021/22, Seminar | I’m so fluid in my shell. Posthuman Bodies in Art, Design & Architecture University of Cologne |
| WT 2021/22, Seminar | Urban (Media) Ecologies. New Modes of Earthly Habitation University of the Arts, Bremen |
| ST 2021, Seminar |
The World is Full of Monsters. Posthumanism and Design University of the Arts, Bremen |
| WT 2020/21, Seminar | Claiming Utopia! University of the Arts, Bremen |
| ST 2020, Seminar |
Cyber Cities |
| ST 2020, Workshop | Methods Lab Köln International School of Design |
| WT 2019/20, Workshop | Global Weirding and Ecological Nightmares. Designing for an Uncertain Future Art Academy Latvia |
| ST 2019, Workshop | Environmental Activism in Art and Design University of the Arts, Bremen |
| ST 2019, Project|Excursion | The Bauhaus Code Köln International School of Design, Bauhaus Dessau |
| WT 2018/19, Workshop | Sensing/Translating University of Applied Science, Rotterdam |
| WT 2018/19, Winter School | Beyond Human Glasgow School of Art |
- 2024. DAAD Research grant for doctoral students
- 2023. Saxon Scholarship Program, Doctoral Fellowship, TU Dresden
- 2023. Open Access Publication Grant for the anthology Attending [to] Futures. Matters of Politics in Design Education, Research, Practice. TH Köln
- 2021. Grant "Quality Enhancing Measures" for the international conferenve Attending [to] Futures. Matters of Politics in Design Education, Research, Practice. Köln International School of Design
- 2021. Grant for Innovative Education for the collaborative seminar and symposium Planetary Reversal with Alan Shapiro and Abida Malik. HfK Bremen
| 2014-2017 | M.A. Art and Design Studies (Folkwang University of the Arts) |
| 2009-2014 | B.A. Communication Design (Hochschule Niederrhein) |
| 2012 | Erasmus Graphic Design (Centre Universitari de Disseny de Barcelona) |
- Design/Architecture Studies
- Science & Technology Studies
- Design History
- Environmental Humanities / Energy Humanities
- Critical Posthuman Studies
- Cybernetics
- Environmental History