RESEARCH
My main research area is critical creative research. Read about how I define and approach “independent scholarship” here. See my online profiles on ORCID and Google Scholar. Below are the areas of inquiry I am a part of and contribute to:
- Design research
- Reflexivity
- Materiality
- Embodiment
- Black interiority
- Practice-led research
- Critical autoethnography
- Critical citation practice
- Black critical thought
- 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 practice
Images from research projects and facilitation in the following contexts: Brown University x Rhode Island School of Design (Images courtesy of Better World x Design), WonderLab at Monash University, Centre for Nordic Otherwise, Andromeda 8220, Parsons New School for Design, and NEW INC.
BOOKS & ARTICLES
TITLE PUBLISHER AUTHORSYEAR
Doing Creative Work from Your Political Body: A Guide and Process for Practice-led ResearchSet Margins’ Diatta, M. D.2026
Chapter 3.3: The Politics of Participation in Service Design: Preparation, Emergence, and Refusals Bloomsbury Publishing | Handbook of Service Design: Plural Perspectives and a Critical Contemporary Agenda, Penin, L., Prendiville, A., & Sangiorgi, D. (eds)Agid, S., Trischler, J., & Diatta, M. D.2026
Chapter 10: Turning the Body Inside Out: Model-Making, Critical Theory, and Self-Accountability Bloomsbury Publishing | Making Knowledge: Design Studies Practices in Action, Bonne Zabolotney (ed)Diatta, M. D.2024
Undisciplining Who We Bring to the Academic Table: Practical Tactics to Accompany Critical Creative InquiryPlatform for Artistic Research Sweden (PARSE) https://doi.org/10.70733/7363hfheydn4Diatta, M. D.
2023
Freezing Ontologies: Making Visible the Messiness of Working with TheoryText and Performance Quarterly https://doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2022.2058076Diatta, M. D.2022
A Family of Sensibilities: Toward a Relational Design Practice Grounded in Materiality and EmbodimentDesign and Culture
https://doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2022.2058076Diatta, M. D., Goncalves, R. D., & Grocott, L. H.2022
A Place to Meet: How Critical Theory Cares for the Everyday in Artistic PracticeCluster for Critical Artistic Research (CCARe), Research in Arts and Education
https://doi.org/10.54916/rae.119529Diatta, M. D., Jones, S. H., McEntee, K.2021
A Family of Sensibilities: Threading NotesFigshare
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13353374.v2Diatta, M. D., & Gonçalves, R. D. 2020
Our Everyday Forms: Archiving objects of resistance at home Nordic Design Research Society Conference, Aalto University, Espoo, FinlandDiatta, M. D.2019
Material Communications: A strategy applied in clinical family therapy and designIntellect Books, JAWS: Journal of Arts Writing by Students
https://doi.org/10.1386/jaws.1.1.63_1Diatta, M. D.2015
Please do not hesitate to email me for access to my articles to bypass the academic paywalls.