Research Group 2022: Rana Ghavami

Alice Twemlow: How do you teach practice, research and theory, and the relationship between all these three?

Rana Ghavami: Over the years, I have developed lesson plans and reading and writing prompts depending upon the collective questions and research trajectories of the departments I have been working at. For the purposes of this evaluation, I find it important to focus on questions about the conditions within which we develop our teaching and research practices. In this regard, my question is, what are the working conditions in which we do research? How do the departments facilitate and support their teaching staff? I think we all care a lot about the work we do and the practices we teach. We always invest more time and care into our work and into teaching than we are allocated, particularly as we are involved with our students’ study trajectory and their work. In practice, that entails doing a lot of work for which the hours are not accounted.

For “Theoretical Frameworks”, a course which I teach to second-year MA Industrial Design students, I wrote an outline in which I begin by introducing the theories and practices we aim to engage with and laying out what my propositions and leading questions are. On the one hand the course is instructional, and on the other it lays out pivotal questions or concepts within a particular theoretical framework. Then each week, based upon those research questions, we either work with texts or case studies, and with prompts. I try to alternate between individual and collective sessions, and to incorporate extra time for self-study or just simply to mitigate the workload.

In a way, the course outline is also a reading plan. Each week I make time to read a text in class, and share with them which questions or methods I use for a close reading session. That is one of the ways in which I try to introduce research into a course outline. I allow students to think, “Okay, by engaging with these texts and methods, I can slowly develop a position and give a response to this question. And not only an answer to this question, but a way to unfold it, and to reason how I have reached this answer to this question”. Similar to the approach of a research process, it might be that we will need to change our focus or decide to do other things, or it might be that we need more groundwork than I initially had planned. And I think that in a good course outline, you have to have that space. That’s why I think of my course outline as a research hypothesis.

And so, I developed a course that focuses not only on the theories and theoretical frameworks and the questions that are, I think, important across practices, but also on writing and how, through writing, you can also engage with these questions and conduct research. I want to make sure students gain an understanding of what positioning means and the difference between positioning and positionalities, as the course deals with sites of research and fieldwork research in and through design.

In our department we are asked to share the criteria with which we are planning to evaluate students’ work in our lesson plan. Based on this framework, I usually make a presentation where I share how I have read their work alongside those criteria, and I always try to embed those criteria in the practices and theories we read. In addition, I collect and include in my presentation excerpts from the text they have written and show how, as a class, they have, for instance, approached the structure of their text and how the structure supports the essay’s aim and scope. I also like to share with them the various ways in which they have used particular theories such as feminist and intersectional perspectives. Or I focus on their writing and point out how they have used the first- or third-person perspective, or where and how their writing has affected me. To me it’s important to be clear about how I evaluate them. And it is subjective — in part, it is based on my experience as a teacher and therefore on my interpretation, and in part it is based on the theories and guides we have grappled with together. It’s a way to turn evaluations from an administrative matter into a collective studying process.

AT: I think KABK is lucky to have someone like you who is so thoughtful and analytical about research-informed pedagogy. Are there other techniques or strategies or modes of teaching that you are exploring?

RG: I was asked to work with students on their graduation texts and project positioning. As part of this, they wrote letters, which was a step towards finding “reciprocity”. It is within this context that I wanted them to think about graduation and what it means to make work public. For some, the work is already part of a community; you could say it’s “public”, although that term has multiple meanings depending on the type of practice you have and the way you work. In what way do the current graduation infrastructure and resources support those practices and students?

In preparation for the “Fault Lines Research Symposium” last year, I talked in depth with one of my students, Ritvik Khushu, about “reciprocal research”. If we depart from different epistemologies and wordings, if our research is part of other communities and other sites of research than the ones we are part of, or close to, how do we then make sure our research is shared there? What are the challenges and ethical questions? Can we develop other modes of engagement beyond the graduation show model? I think we should invite the people we are engaged with in our research, as they can hold us accountable and reciprocate our ethics and the relationships that are important to those sites of research and communities. That conversation was really meaningful, as we both share these questions and ideas. Ritvik went on to develop a beautiful conversation along these lines and invited people he really wanted to engage with.

AT: With the Individual Study Track course titled “Objects in Relation”, you had a chance to kind of make a new prototype. Did something different emerge from that?

RG: Yes, absolutely because we were able to work together with the National Museum of World Cultures and visit and work at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and the Volkenkunde in Leiden, and the ethnographic museum became a site of research and positioning for design and design history. It was such a nice experience and collaboration. In ISTs you work with students from different departments, and what is obvious in one department, or discipline, might not be the case in another. I love that. It means that you cannot rely too much on the assumptions you have. What was challenging, however, was the planning. It’s on a Wednesday and it tends to be difficult to organise the ISTs across all departments. Some of the students couldn’t participate because they had other classes to attend.

AT: How else do you share your own research?

RG: I develop programs and workshops, which is part of my work as a curator of ArtEZ’s Studium Generale. Currently I am developing a public presentation and podcast with a colleague at the Academy of Art and Design in Enschede who has written an exciting book titled Affect as Contamination. I always try to develop my work in relation to education —just as I did in the Research Group where I developed teaching materials. I don’t normally have this kind of space or the hours, and this time has been really meaningful to me, my work and the syllabus I am developing for next year.

AT: Lastly, how would you characterise your practice?

RG: I am a researcher and teacher. I also develop, facilitate and curate educational programs.

AT: In that sense, in this country you’re quite rare. Most people seem to have a practice as an artist or a designer or a researcher, first, and, as a teacher, second. But you put education firmly at the centre of your practice. Right up front, in fact!