Ulises Navarro Aguiar is a lecturer at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design, a researcher affiliated to the Business & Design Lab, and a member of the research collective Origens Media Lab. He received his PhD from the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in 2017. He carried out his doctoral research at Volvo Group as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow within DESMA.
Ulises is holder of a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, and a Master’s degree in Design Management from a joint programme between the University of Salford in the UK and KEDGE Design School in France. Before turning to research, he worked as a service designer with Nekoé (now Aktan), a service innovation agency located in Orléans, France.
Broadly speaking, Ulises’s work lies at the crossroads of organization studies, design studies, and science and technology studies, and deals with different topics around strategic design, ecological redirection, and valuation in, of and around design. Conceptually, it draws on approaches inspired by pragmatism and (post-)actor-network theory. Alongside his research work, he has conducted workshops and delivered lectures/talks at a number of institutions including IT University of Copenhagen, ESC Clermont, CENTRO, CEDIM, Chalmers University of Technology, Tecnológico de Monterrey, and Strate School of Design.