Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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PAPERS: Practicing with Care: Context and Specificality Location: Appleton Tower, LT2 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/appleton-lecture-theatre-2-edinburgh Session Chair: John Vines, University of Edinburgh Session Chair: Sarah Kettley, University of Edinburgh | |
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Care through ambiguity: Findings from participatory health design 1: School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China); 2: School of Architecture and Design, Harbin Institute of Technology, People’s Republic of China This paper explores how ambiguity can function as a condition for care in participatory health design. Through patient-centred interviews and a participatory workshop, it examines how uncertainty and emergent understanding shape the relational and ethical dimensions of care. The study finds that ambiguity enables participants to remain responsive within unequal structures and to negotiate care through hesitation, metaphor, and embodied expression, highlighting how relational sensitivity operates within asymmetrical power relations. Care is reframed not as a stable act of giving, but as a social process of continual adjustment and mutual dependency. By embracing indeterminacy in design practice, this research shows how ambiguity sustains fragile relations of trust and reciprocity. It argues that care persists not through clarity but through a willingness to dwell with what is uncertain. The paper contributes to ongoing design discourses that view care as a situated, negotiated, and collective practice. View Paper: https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1188
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