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RESEARCH TOPICS
My main research area is critical artistic research.As an independent scholar, I use academic research as a way to attend to what is conceptual—which allows us to speculate, extrapolate, interpret—and what is concrete—where we can implement, iterate, and practice. Being independent means that while I have a doctoral degree (2018-2021) from Monash University (Melbourne), I continue to do academic research, writing, and publishing without affiliation or salary from an institution. Below are the areas of inquiry I am a part of and contribute to.
- Practice-led research
- Design research
- Black critical thought
- Material practice
- Interiority
- Knowledge production
- Critical autoethnography
- Critical citation practice
- Creative contexts to investigate how artists and designers engage with contemporary socio-political conditions
- Developing methodologies and reflexive methods to explore relationships between knowing and making
- Critical theories, studies, and practices
ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS
Title
Publication
AUTHORS
YEAR
Chapter 10: Turning the Body Inside Out: Model-Making, Critical Theory, and Self-Accountability
Bloomsbury Publishing, Making Knowledge: Design Studies Practices in Action, Bonne Zabolotney︎︎︎ 21 pages
Diatta, M. D.
2024
Undisciplining Who We Bring to the Academic Table: Practical Tactics to Accompany Critical Creative Inquiry
Diatta, M. D.
2023
Freezing Ontologies: Making Visible the Messiness of Working with Theory
Text and Performance Quarterly
︎︎︎ 14 pages
︎︎︎ 14 pages
Diatta, M. D.
2022
A Family of Sensibilities: Toward a Relational Design Practice Grounded in Materiality and Embodiment
Design and Culture, 1–25
︎︎︎ 25 pages
︎︎︎ 25 pages
Diatta, M. D., Goncalves, R. D., & Grocott, L. H.
2022
A Place to Meet: How Critical Theory Cares for the Everyday in Artistic Practice
Cluster for Critical Artistic Research (CCARe), Research in Arts and Education, 304–326
︎︎︎ 22 pages
︎︎︎ 22 pages
Diatta, M. D., Jones, S. H., McEntee, K.
2021
Our Everyday Forms: Archiving objects of resistance at home
Nordic Design Research Society Conference, Aalto University,
Espoo, Finland
︎︎︎ 5 pages
︎︎︎ 5 pages
Diatta, M. D.
2019
Material Communications: A strategy applied in clinical family therapy and design
Intellect Books, JAWS, 1(1), 63-76
︎︎︎ 13 pages
︎︎︎ 13 pages
Diatta, M. D.
2015
MORE
See Academic CV for more.* Please do not hesitate to email me for access to my articles to bypass the academic paywalls.