Catalina Alzate

Contact

You can contact me at cata@illinois.edu

I'm a Colombian designer, writer and project lead, focusing on action-research in design and well-being. After working in the design industry and learning from it, I've held academic positions since 2014, building bridges with feminist collectives, public-health practitioners, healthcare providers, research networks and grassroots organizations through diverse collaborations that advance questions about gender & technology design, participation, and community wellbeing. I direct the Critical Anatomies Lab, where we study and develop critical anatomies of bodies and healthcare systems, offer justice-oriented analysis of emerging technologies, and nurture transformative collaborations with community-based health practitioners and organizations.

Broadly, I am interested in subverting the ways that design operates, often monopolized and serving the interests of a few, towards more communal, community-driven processes. To that end, I co-shape collaborative spaces where we envision and design systems and services that help us achieve our situated goals for health, well-being, pleasure and connection.

I work with theories and methods in Participatory Design and Service Design, in intersection with Feminist Theory, Social Justice, and Media Studies. My engagement with ‘Integral Theatre’ (an interplay of Jungian psychology and physical theater), and with 'Female Pleasure and Sexuality' as part of my additional training background, influence the methods and forms of my work.

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor in the Graphic Design Department, School of Art & Design at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Before joining UIUC, I was an Assistant Professor of Practice at UT Austin, and a Faculty at Srishti Manipal Insitute of Art, Design and Technology, in Bangalore, India. I have served as an advisor for the Feminist Internet Research Network, where we do collaborative research about Gender and Digital Technologies across activisms in the Global South. I occasionally write in this blog.