intersectional feminist design research lab
intersectional feminist design research lab
what we do
university of waterloo, mount royal university, university of illinois
university of waterloo, mount royal university, university of illinois
who we are
collaborative; interdisciplinary; interested in making as a method
collaborative; interdisciplinary; interested in making as a method
research areas
emergent and iterative
emergent and iterative
projects & ideas

about qLab

qlab is located in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, the School of Communication Studies at Mount Royal University, and the College of Fine & Applied Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Our members work with universities, private industry, government, and not-for-profit organizations across North America. The qcollaborative undertakes design research projects that extend and interrogate the lab’s commitments. Our projects are typically collaborative, paced to encourage reflection, and funded (by grants or industry partnerships). We seek to create safer, more inclusive public spaces for marginalized and targeted communities. We are committed to challenging and changing unjust behaviours such as racism, colonialism, (cis)sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ablism, classism, and xenophobia wherever they occur, including in academia, in social justice movements, and in ourselves.

feminist placemaking

We seek to better articulate how feminism does and can operate in public spaces through the lens of performative social media interventions.
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materializing the digital

Through the process of making, thinking, and remaking, we explore the personal, social, and ethical consequences of abstracting people, environments, communities, or experiences into digitally-based data.
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remediating experience

We're considering the nature of spaces co-created by performance, media, text, and interactivity.
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design for social justice

We are interested in projects that pursue strategies for mending existing social fabrics or creating new ones from whole cloth.
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SOME OF OUR PROJECTS

Activating Interpretation

Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, we explore a set of working hypotheses about experience design in the digital humanities, focusing primarily on the preparatory and departure experiences that occur in liminal spaces around the principal event.
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Materializing Data

Shame is something that is felt so deeply and is so troublesome and is so disruptive to a person’s life that we wanted to show this in a way that in itself is disruptive. Hence our choice of an equally disruptive material: tampons.
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Theatre for Relationality

“Theatre for Relationality” is developing a new approach to audience development that inspires positive social change through collaboration with community partners.
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events & presentations

The qcollaborative undertakes design research projects that offer potential to extend and interrogate qlab’s commitments. We share our work as much and as often as possible.
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  1. May 27

    “I can do that”: The Multi-modal, Durational Vibrancy of Theatrical Matter

    This paper complicates two theoretical threads in recent discussions of the ontology and communicative potential of matter by exploring the aesthetic context of theatrical performance. Presented by Shana MacDonald and Jennifer Roberts-Smith (U Waterloo).

  2. May 27

    qConvenor receives Canada’s Design Educator of the Year

    Registered Graphic Designers of Canada, representing Canada’s graphic designers, will honour one of our qConvenors, Mount Royal University information design professor Milena Radzikowska, its inaugural teaching award at the DesignThinkers Conference in Vancouver in 2019.

  3. Jun 02

    Materializing the Digital: Feminist Spaces for Young Audiences’ Agency in Digitally Mediated Environments

    This panel introduces a central research thread of the newly-founded qcollaborative, an intersectional feminist design research lab with nodes at the Universities of Waterloo, Mount Royal, and Illinois (qcollaborative.com).

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qLab on Instagram

Gathering “the personal is political” from across feminist media. Resisting the colonial capitalist heteropatriarchy.