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Six-part seminar series to focus on global health

York University will feature a six-part seminar series on global health and design led by world-renowned designer Bruce Mau.

Presented by the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and the Department of Design in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design (AMPD), the series "Massive Action: Global Health Design" will kick off Nov. 2 and run through to April.

Bruce Mau
Bruce Mau

In this series of seminars, Dahdaleh Institute community Fellow and visionary designer, author, educator and artist, Mau will discuss how design methodology is critical to the conversation around global health.

Through a series of seminars with specific research projects as case studies, the seminars will explore four areas of focus – youth education, the One Health approach, water safety optimization and artificial intelligence – and look at them as design opportunities. Mau will discuss how his MC24 Principles for Life-Centred Design can be applied to address the most pressing challenges of our time and see how they are specifically relevant to designing global health.   

In the opening seminar, Mau will address caring as the fundamental operating system of design and explore the exponential capacity of design to take on the greatest challenges in human history, how we are already doing that, and why for some reason, we don’t believe it is possible. 

The opening and closing seminars will be led by Mau and are open to the public. Registration is required. The dates are:

The other four seminars will be focused on specific case studies of global health research projects underway at the Dahdaleh Institute. In each seminar, the lead researchers will introduce their research project, and Mau will offer insights and lead a workshop discussion on the project’s design opportunities. Reading material for each seminar will be circulated in advance. The event organizers will consider limited participation in one or more of the case studies if participants register their interest in the signup form.

Mau will demonstrate that design offers a powerful methodology of optimism at a time when mindset and outlook will be critical, not only to our collective success but also to the wellbeing of individual healthcare workers operating under the most challenging conditions in human history. 

Registration is required. The dates for the case study seminars are:

  • Dec. 7: The Partnership for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing (lead researcher Professor Kate Tilleczek)
  • Jan. 11, 2023: Designing One Health Governance for Antimicrobial Stewardship (lead researcher Professor Mary Wiktorowicz)
  • Feb. 15, 2023: Safe Water Optimization Tools: Ensuring Water Safety & Protecting Public Health in Humanitarian Emergencies (lead researcher Syed Imran Ali)
  • March 15, 2023: Artificial Intelligence for Global Health Priority Diseases (lead researcher Professor Jude Kong)

For more details, visit the seminar webpage.

About Bruce Mau

Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist, designer, author, educator, and artist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centred design. Across 30 years of design innovation, he’s collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists.  

Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas. His most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area. 

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