Through my PhD, I developed an award-winning creative practice in Australia. My practice-based research explores what design can do, on the topic of death inside the hospital. The project engages with palliative care practitioners, enabling them to talk about death in diverse ways. In the recent past death has been colonised and claimed by the hospital. This made death invisible, a taboo subject. As we no longer see death or talk about it, we have lost the socio-cultural know-how of dealing with it. Meaningful discussions about death and its implications are important to plan for end-of-life.

I developed the Bioscope as a cartography of death and a tool to facilitate conversations about end-of-life. The Bioscope was cocreated via two participant engaged workshops with Palliative Care Practitioners at Alfred Hospital. Prototyped as a tapestry embroidered on fabric, the Bioscope has forty text-based sites and twenty-seven ornamental icons that instigate conversation. The Bioscope socialises and restyles a banal death into something that is aesthetic and approachable. Engaging with the Bioscope can transform a person’s understanding of death, enable acceptance of mortality, empower authentic living and inspire compassion towards the dying.

Alongside the Bioscope project at the Alfred Hospital, I had another ongoing project at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. In addition to clinicians, this study engaged Palliative Care Volunteer Groups, with lived experience in co-design activities. I also shadowed a doctor on his rounds of the palliative care unit. The Peter Mac project explored what kind of an app or digital innovation would be useful to people at the end-of-life. Six potential trajectories for design emerged as an outcome. This app is being incubated as a MedTech Startup.

At the 2024 Design Outlook Conference in Melbourne, I presented the Bioscope project. A witty highlight of my presentation was a journey map of a typical user – from birth to death. Upon deeper reflection, this diagram became a model for a practice that is concerned with designing for the two significant life events (birth and death), for the time experienced between these events through a practice of care (of the self and others) and for our relationship to the world (ecology and society) that we are inserted into.

The work I do in the ecology space is informed by my MA in History of Design from the Royal College of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), where I develop expertise on south Asian Material Culture and labour-intensive manufacturing processes.

My social design practice emphasizes innovation, particularly within the context of a rapidly evolving post-capitalist world. In this context, social innovation has emerged as a crucial approach—distinct from and often more impactful than technological innovation.

Finally, during my PhD, my practice focused specifically on design for palliative care or for dying. There was one specific artefact – the Bioscope - that I prototyped. I am now beginning to work on other projects that inspire me in the - design for dying - space. However, the work itself, the critical theory and the approach is transferrable to design for ageing, death, after death care, grief and bereavement.

At the other end of the spectrum, I recently taught a Studio at RMIT University that designed for pregnancies in Meghalaya, India. I am also keen to develop a Bioscope like artefact to support better mental health outcomes. Some people who engage with the Bioscope use it to talk about and process trauma. The artefact lends itself well as a tool to be used to examine and engage with the existential condition and the anxieties that are associated with it.

Engaging people through creative activity and developing tools for meaningful engagement have emerged as a strong element of my ongoing teaching, research and creative practice.

I am now building the Bioscope project into a social enterprise and August 2024 onwards; I have been facilitating a monthly pro bono Death Cafe at my local library in Melbourne. I hope to continue to expand my research practice in design for health, society, culture and ecology. I seek to do so through embedding, socialising and evaluating the impact of my ongoing projects in the community and by developing new projects through interdisciplinary and collaborative engagements.