Laureate Professor Sarah Pink
Director, Emerging Technologies Research Lab & FUTURES Hub
Monash Art, Design and Architecture & Faculty of Information Technology
Anticipatory Infrastructures for Emerging Technology Futures
In what has been called a polycrisis world characterised by multiple climate, economic, geopolitical and technologically driven crises, we urgently need to infrastructure new ways of understanding, novel modes of foresight about and innovations in design research and practice.
I suggest that by redefining the fundamental concepts through which we understand our relations with emerging technologies, we might consequently re-think – or constitute new anticipatory infrastructures for imagining – our possible futures with emerging technologies. On the one hand this means pursuing anthropologically, the experiential question of what it feels like to live in possible futures, and on the other it invites new interdisciplinary design research and practice, towards inclusive, ethical futures.
I will use the concept of trust as an example – specifically because it has been engaged so much in studies of interaction and transactional relations – to explore how going beyond interactional and transactional concepts of trust could help us to reconceptualise our possible future lives with emerging technologies as part of trusted futures.
Sarah Pink (PhD, Phd hcx2, FASSA) is an award winning futures anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. Sarah is currently Laureate Professor and Director of the Emerging Technologies Lab and FUTURES Hub at Monash University. Previously she was Distinguished Professor and Director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University, and she holds Visiting Professorships at Halmstad University and University of West of England, and in 2026 is an International Visiting Professor at Stuttgart University.
Closing keynote Panel
Wed, 17 Jun | 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Redefining “I” in Designing Interactive Systems
What new design horizons emerge when we revisit and redefine what we mean by interactive in Designing Interactive Systems? How might such a shift make what we design – and how we design – more relevant and meaningful to the challenges and opportunities of today and tomorrow? What changes might this require in our design practices, methods, and education?
Bringing together distinguished voices from design research, artistic practice, and industry, this closing keynote panel will explore these questions through the lens of DIS 2026’s theme, Beyond Interaction.
Join us as we conclude DIS 2026 by reflecting on the future of design and imagining the next horizons for Designing Interactive Systems.
Meet our distinguished panellists:
Kristina “Kia” Höök, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Kristina “Kia” Höök is a Professor in Interaction Design at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. She is known for her work on designing for bodily engagement in interaction through soma design – designing for bodily engagement in interaction with technologies such as soft robotics, haptics, heat and similar, connected using embodied (physical) AI. Höök is a horseback rider, mother, grandmother, and feminist.
William Odom, Simon Fraser University, Canada
William Odom is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and director of the Homeware Lab.
His research explores longer-term human-data interaction, slow interaction design, human-nature relations, and methods for developing Research-through-Design practice. He is co-founder of the Pictorials publication format, first launched at ACM DIS 2014.
Patrick Jean, Head of Design, Grab, Singapore
Patrick Jean, an experienced design leader, guides organisations in envisioning new possibilities and executing with precision, leveraging a holistic approach rooted in systems thinking. His expertise encompasses experience design, creative direction, cross-functional team management, research, strategy, and business management. Patrick has had the privilege of collaborating with industry leaders like Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Yahoo!, and Samsung.
Berny Tan, Artist / Curator, Design, Singapore Art Museum
Berny Tan is Curator, Design at Singapore Art Museum, examining expanded creative practices at the intersection of design and contemporary art. Also a practising artist, her strategies involve the interplay of legibility and illegibility to create alternative ways of reading. She holds an MA (Dist) in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BFA (Hons) in Visual & Critical Studies from the School of Visual Arts. She was awarded the 2022 IMPART Art Prize in recognition of her independent curatorial work, which she grounds in empathy, sensitivity, and collaboration.