A new academic paper, Beyond Boundaries: Exploring Design through Place-Based Learning, has been published in the Learn X Design 2025 conference series of the Design Research Society. Written by Azeem Hamid of the Estonian Academy of Arts and Umar Hameed of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the paper reflects on a cross-cultural learning project developed in partnership with SINA in Uganda.
The paper looks at how place-based and experiential learning can support creative problem-solving, collaboration across cultures, and the development of social innovation projects. It also reflects honestly on challenges such as communication across contexts and complex group dynamics, which makes it a thoughtful contribution to the wider conversation on design education and learning in real-world settings.
The paper is based on a longer collaboration that brought design students from Pakistan to Uganda in two early phases, first in December 2017 and then again from June to July 2018, each time with a new group of students learning alongside SINA scholars in Mpigi. A third phase followed in 2019 at SINA, this time bringing together students from Pakistan and Nigeria, which gave the project a broader cross-cultural dimension and helped shape the reflections presented in the paper.
Read the full paper at:
https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1583&context=learnxdesign