Investigating Normal

Is it possible to engineer an inclusive social future? An artist in an engineering school, Sara Hendren’s work is driven by questions about human ability in tech-driven cultures. What counts as normal capacity? Which technologies liberate, and which confine? Drawing from disability studies, design research, social practice art, and urban planning, her work is a restless, hybrid body of projects that yield both designed objects and a disposition toward research. Sara teaches at Olin College of Engineering where she runs the Adaptation + Ability Group. Her recent work, including Slope Intercept and Engineering at Home, involves collaborative mixed media projects and social design work on technology, the human body, and the politics of disability. She writes and lectures on prosthetics, disability studies, hybrid art-engineering practices, critical design, and related topics. Her first book, on the unexpected places where disability is at the heart of design in everyday objects and environments, is forthcoming from Riverhead/Penguin.

GIDEST is a Mellon-funded research institute based at The New School that incubates transdisciplinary research at the intersection of social theory, art, and design. As well as our faculty, artist-in-residence, and doctoral fellows’ programs, we run a series of biweekly public seminars that feature both prominent and emerging scholars and practitioners. Our seminars are devoted to discussion of pre-circulated materials.

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