Dr. Oliver Vodeb
Senior Lecturer, Communication Design
Details
-
College: School of Design
-
Department: School of Design
-
Campus: City Campus Australia
-
oliver.vodeb@rmit.edu.au
-
ORCID: 0000-0003-4595-9728
Open to
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
About
Dr Oliver Vodeb is a critical design theorist, creative practice researcher, student and educator.
His research is inter/extra-disciplinary. He situates design as a social practice and operates within the productive relations and margins between academia, design practice and social movements.
Oliver’s research employs diverse strategies to investigate the processes and institutions that determine everyday life and exert influence over social futures. Using critical theory and practice to investigate the complex processes of production, distribution and reception around design, he seeks to establish principles for responsible social practice. His work is mostly centered around issues of social and environmental change, decolonisation of knowledge and the public sphere. His research is inter/extra-disciplinary and he understands theory and practice as interrelated.
Oliver is creative director and principal curator of Memefest Festival of Socially Responsive Design + Communication with its international friendly competition. Committed to radical onto-epistemic change of design + communication and with participants and collaborators from more than 60 countries, this is a unique alternative to the industrial awards complex. Memefest is a global network dedicated to spreading alternative theory and praxis since 2002. The Memefest network brings together critical designers, social scientists, activists, artists, educators and community members in unique extradisciplinary situations to research, design and implement public campaigns and interventions.
Oliver's work centers around urgent social issues to which he applies the lens of design in critical ways. Some of the issues he has been working on in the past years are debt as an instrument for social control, Aboriginal decolonisation and forced child removal, food democracy, food apartheid, risk in design education and the role of intimacy in social change.
Oliver collaborates with respected academic publishers like Bloomsbury (Design Philosophy Papers, Design and Culture), University of Ljubljana, Universidad Caldas, Intellect books UK while at the same time creating a new alternative scene fostering fundamental change of communication design in order to become more relevant in times of radical uncertainty and environmental degradation.
He has curated twelve Memefests, published four books with University of Ljubljana and Intellect Books UK and papers in journals like Design and Culture, Design Philosophy Papers, Journal for Critique of Science and Art, Kepes and Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education. His monograph Socially Responsive Communication and collaborative book Food Democracy were sold out and reprinted.
Currently working on:
• New book: Radical Intimacies, Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities, with Intellect Books UK
• New book: Post Branding Forecast, with Set Margins'
• New Memefest website
• Researching the interdisciplinary potentials of communication design and documentary photography.
His research is inter/extra-disciplinary. He situates design as a social practice and operates within the productive relations and margins between academia, design practice and social movements.
Oliver’s research employs diverse strategies to investigate the processes and institutions that determine everyday life and exert influence over social futures. Using critical theory and practice to investigate the complex processes of production, distribution and reception around design, he seeks to establish principles for responsible social practice. His work is mostly centered around issues of social and environmental change, decolonisation of knowledge and the public sphere. His research is inter/extra-disciplinary and he understands theory and practice as interrelated.
Oliver is creative director and principal curator of Memefest Festival of Socially Responsive Design + Communication with its international friendly competition. Committed to radical onto-epistemic change of design + communication and with participants and collaborators from more than 60 countries, this is a unique alternative to the industrial awards complex. Memefest is a global network dedicated to spreading alternative theory and praxis since 2002. The Memefest network brings together critical designers, social scientists, activists, artists, educators and community members in unique extradisciplinary situations to research, design and implement public campaigns and interventions.
Oliver's work centers around urgent social issues to which he applies the lens of design in critical ways. Some of the issues he has been working on in the past years are debt as an instrument for social control, Aboriginal decolonisation and forced child removal, food democracy, food apartheid, risk in design education and the role of intimacy in social change.
Oliver collaborates with respected academic publishers like Bloomsbury (Design Philosophy Papers, Design and Culture), University of Ljubljana, Universidad Caldas, Intellect books UK while at the same time creating a new alternative scene fostering fundamental change of communication design in order to become more relevant in times of radical uncertainty and environmental degradation.
He has curated twelve Memefests, published four books with University of Ljubljana and Intellect Books UK and papers in journals like Design and Culture, Design Philosophy Papers, Journal for Critique of Science and Art, Kepes and Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education. His monograph Socially Responsive Communication and collaborative book Food Democracy were sold out and reprinted.
Currently working on:
• New book: Radical Intimacies, Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities, with Intellect Books UK
• New book: Post Branding Forecast, with Set Margins'
• New Memefest website
• Researching the interdisciplinary potentials of communication design and documentary photography.
Supervisor projects
- Indonesian comics: shaping cultural identities and designing nations incentive
- 23 Mar 2023
- Restoring Singapore's food collective actualization through regenerative agrarian dynamics
- 21 Jun 2020
- The Bioscope: Codesign Enabled Conversations About Death With Palliative Care Practitioners
- 18 Jun 2020
Teaching interests
Oliver has significant global teaching experience, having taught design in Europe, USA, South America, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. He has given Memefest workshops in Slovenia, Colombia, Netherlands, Australia, USA and Cuba.
He has taught a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, including theory and research courses, advanced studio practice courses and interdisciplinary courses connecting communication designers with students from other design disciplines as well as with students from architecture, social sciences, fine arts and photography.
His strength is in connecting theory and practice and different disciplines in ways that many times open new onto-epistemic relations and possibilities.
Oliver is teaching in the Master of Communication Design:
• Research methods for design and digital media
• Design studies
• Design strategy
• Communication Design for Social Change
Research interests
Design Practice and Management, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Communication and Media Studies, Visual Arts and Crafts
