Jessa Crispin is a writer and editor. She is the author of The Dead Ladies Project, The Creative Tarot, and Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto. She hosts the podcast Public Intellectual and is a columnist for the Guardian US. She can be found at jessacrispin.com.

With a body of work combining memory, identity, and decoloniality, Imad Gebrayel looks at design with a critical lens diverging from eurocentric education and artistic trends. While advocating for separating design from the art school, he decided to break away from the predefined academic structures and pursue a PhD in Ethnology after two design degrees.

His field research is centered around negotiations of memory and identifications on Sonnenallee -known as the Arab street of Berlin.

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With a mixed background of literary and media studies, Luke Troynar is interested in new approaches to understanding the way we make meaning and building discourse using various mediums.

His current PhD project involves adapting a ‘pragmasemiotic’ framework from literary-linguistic disciplines so that it may be applied to internet memes to better understand their semiotic, cultural, and sociopolitical functions.

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Marick Baars is the founder of Modiste Studio, an interior Architecture & Furniture Studio based in Berlin. They’re known for creating contemporary modernist objects and spaces like Bonanza Coffee in Kreuzberg.

In his talk, Marick discussed the factors designers and architects should account for in their practice to create things that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also functional and sustainable.

This talk is part of a series we started called the Afterschool Special to help design students and others interested in the subject understand how to use design as a tool to shape environments as opposed to one used for decorative purposes. With talks given by speakers from the design, anthropology, and architecture scene. 

The first talk was given by Kirill Borisov, Creative Director at Navarra.is on Identity in the Age of Late Capitalism.

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