Ms. Sandra Githinji
Details
Department: School of AUD
Campus: City Campus Australia
sandra.githinji2@rmit.edu.au
About
Sandra Githinji is an interior designer, educator and creative practice researcher undertaking a PhD in the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University. Her research investigates how creative practice can respond to the colonial legacies that shape diasporic relationships to home, belonging and place.
Central to her work is the development of Constellational Practice, a creative practice methodology that understands home as a dynamic network of relationships continually negotiated across people, place and time. Drawing on interior design and diaspora studies, Constellational Practice offers a relational framework for examining how home is remembered, reclaimed, reimagined and reconnected.
Through making, exhibitions, gathering and participatory design methods, Sandra explores how diasporic communities sustain connections to ancestral and contemporary homes while navigating displacement, migration and cultural transformation. Her research contributes to contemporary discussions on migration, spatial belonging, decolonial design practice and the evolving role of interior design as a discipline concerned not only with where people dwell, but how relationships to home are continually enacted.
Her work has been disseminated through exhibitions, publications and public programs nationally and internationally, including Nairobi, Perth and Melbourne Design Weeks, alongside featuring in design and architecture publications, most notably Making Space: Interior Design by Women. Alongside her research, she teaches within the Bachelor of Interior Design (Honours) program at RMIT University and maintains an independent design and curatorial practice, Sandra Githinji Studio.
Media
Academic positions
- Associate Lecturer
- RMIT Univeristy
- Architecture and Urban Design
- Melbourne, Australia
- 18 Feb 2026 – Present
Non-academic positions
- Director
- Collective Futures
- Melbourne, Australia
- 9 Mar 2023 – Present
- Creative Director
- Sandra Githinji Studio
- Melbourne, Australia
- 26 May 2020 – Present
Teaching interests
Her teaching is informed by student-centred and practice-based learning approaches that position lived experience, cultural knowledge and critical reflection as valuable forms of design inquiry. She encourages students to engage with design as a relational and socially situated practice, supporting them to develop conceptual, technical and professional capabilities while responding to contemporary cultural, social and environmental challenges.
Sandra's teaching integrates industry partnerships, community engagement and public-facing projects, creating opportunities for students to connect academic learning with professional practice. She is particularly interested in inclusive pedagogies, alternative ways of knowing, and creating learning environments that support diverse student experiences and perspectives.
Research interests
Her research interests include:
- Diaspora, migration and belonging
- Home-making and relational understandings of home
- Memory, storytelling and cultural transmission
- Decolonial and reparative design practices
- Community-engaged and participatory design
- Exhibition and curatorial practice
- African and African diasporic perspectives in design
- Spatial identity and placemaking
- Design pedagogy and inclusive learning environments
