Many Places, Many Design Histories
The Nordic Forum for Design History Biennial Symposium, 6-8 May 2026, Ubmeje/Umeå, Sápmi/Sweden
The 19th symposium arranged by the Nordic Forum for Design History will be held at the Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, gathering scholars, design practitioners, museum curators, students, teachers, and anyone with an interest in design and design history from Nordic places and points of view.
Participants are invited to engage in conversations on how emerging design practices and shifts in perspectives reshape the way we write, exhibit and understand design history.
The two keynote speakers both turn our attention to histories and practices from the circumpolar region, perspectives that have been less common in Nordic design histories and that challenge assumptions that we might tend to take for granted about ”design”, ”history” and ”the Nordic”:
- "External conditions create specific needs" – What can the coat of the late Iver Jåks mean in contemporary duddjon and for relations to landscapes and places?
Gunvor Guttorm, Professor in duodji (Sámi arts and crafts, traditional art, applied art) at Sámi allaskuvla/Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino in Norway. - For Whom? Relationality and the historicizing of Arctic design
Bart Pushaw, Assistant Professor of art history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA.
The 22 contributions presented during the symposium are grouped in the following sessions:
Expanding NordicDesign histories
Sámi duodji and Silk – Material Dialogues. Heidi Pietarinen et al.
Everyday objects and ritual food in Lule and Pite Sami Religion 1670–1750. Anna Westman Kuhmunen.
Design Across the Iron Curtain: Jyväskylä as a Site of Cold War Design Negotiation. Sini Rinne-Kanto.
Place-based perspectives
The Ärtemark Hat: Braiding Local and Transnational Histories at Halmens Hus. Tom Cubbin.
Attending to the Ordinary: Suburban Everyday Life and Situated Histories. Maryam Fanni.
The Kartan Carpentry. Centre, Periphery and Musealization. Maja Willén.
Sharing histories: installations and interactive activity
Resistant Fibers, Fibrous Histories: The Work of Emiko Tokushige in the Collection of Designmuseum Danmark. Exhibition. Amalie Voss.
Ubiquitous Aluminium, Where Are You From? Map installation. Elín Margot Ármannsdóttir.
Counter-mapping ways of learning. An atlas of art and design schools beyond the centre-periphery relationship. Presentation Katja Klaus and Philipp Sack.
Design museums and beyond
Design Stories from Many Angles: Reframing the Permanent Display at Röhsska Museum. Josefin Kilner and Jessica Sjögerén.
Metabolic Design Museums and their Active Role in Re-Shaping Design. Anja Neidhardt-Mokoena.
Just local? An invitation to a discussion on how we can write design histories with many places, various practices and diverse communities. Christina Zetterlund.
Textile traces
Dressing the Royal Child. Trine Brun Petersen.
Weaving the narrative: Visualizing global iconography, local design practices, and material histories in 16th-century Swedish tapestries. Ida Madsén.
Changing practices
Human Understanding: ‘The user’ as a site for socio-technological imaginaries. Kaisu Savola, Independent researcher, Finland.
Narrating Design Otherwise: Fiction as Method in Historical Recontextualization. Georgina McDowall and Kiersten Thamm.
From Babysitting to Black Panthers. Danish students in SDO and the final seminar in Copenhagen 1969. Anders V. Munch, and Vibeke Riisberg.
Material flows
Moving Matter: Design History as Pathfinding. Ingrid Halland and Kjetil Fallan.
Design as Geological Force: The Making of Norwegian Aluminium. Elín Margot Ármannsdóttir.
Nordic Waters: Negotiating Hydroscapes by Design. Mads Nygaard Folkmann and Malin Graesse.
Panel: Crafting Voices of Norrbotten
Silvia Colombo , Ida Isak Westerberg, Linnea Nilsson, Sofia Öberg, Anna-Stina Svakko and Karin Tjernström.
Symposium Convenors:
Maria Göransdotter, Associate Professor, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University.
Elin Manker, Associate Professor, Department of Culture and Media Studies, Umeå University.
Christina Zetterlund, Associate Professor, Department of Design, Linnaeus University.