Conference Agenda

This Conversation proposes to bring together MTHD researchers and practitioners to facilitate community articulation and to ask: What actions are needed to sustain a convivial MTHD community at a moment of rapid growth and diversification, within and beyond DRS?

To guide this inquiry, we will explore the following sub-questions:

1. How do we understand the current landscape of MTHD across the multiple DRS tracks? How does it relate to the work that is being carried out in other fields?

2. What shared concerns, emerging themes, and unresolved tensions shape our ability to act as an inclusive and supportive community while maintaining disciplinary plurality?

3. What could a community of practice on MTHD look and feel like to mobilise collective efforts? What organisational, institutional, and territorial infrastructures do we need to build, and who needs to be involved?

4. How can we, as human participants, include and empower nonhuman participants? What would it mean to give them roles not only in local, concrete projects but also in shaping the “constitutions” and governance of our institutions (e.g., a SIG)?

5. How do we work effectively with stakeholders across policy, governance, science, industry, and community contexts to mobilise the change and transformation needed for future practice, while respecting diverse ways of knowing and supporting social justice?

This Conversation offers an opportunity for the growing MTHD community to see itself, speak with itself, and imagine itself, laying groundwork for future collaboration within design and across neighbouring fields (from biology and ecology to law and jurisprudence, to name a few). The field is maturing, but without shared spaces for exchange, the risk of siloing grows.