SOCIAL DESIGN NETWORK CONFERENCE 2025

Lucerne (Conference) & Bern (PhD-Symposium)
Switzerland

Reassessing the Social — Understanding Transformation

Social Design is profoundly shaped by the evolving dynamics of society. Our understanding of the ‘social contract’ directly impacts the possibilities and roles of design. In recent decades, we have witnessed the beginnings of profound societal transformations — from increasing diversification and political polarization to climate adaptation, shifts in capital and privilege, and digitalization. As societies evolve, so must our practices, values, ethics, and methods.

How can we ensure that Social Design remains adaptable, reflexive, and accountable, and to whom? What and who should our practice focus on? What alliances should we forge? What imaginaries and frameworks should we adopt or challenge? And what new skills, literacies, and tools are needed to address these challenges in a meaningful, future-oriented way?

At the Social Design Network Conference 2025, we will explore these and other urgent questions through a wide range of practice- and theory-based contributions — from papers and visual essays to workshops, interventions, and more.

About the SDN

The Social Design Network is a group of individual researchers, educators and practitioners of social design who aim to change the design discipline from within.
We build our work on collaborative processes and knowledge-sharing. Through our projects, we actively develop and explore new ways of collaboration, innovative methods and tools for positive social impact.

This is the third bi-annual conference of the Social Design Network.

TRACKS

Diversity and New Actors

Social Design is inherently participatory, involving a broad spectrum of actors. This track explores how emerging alliances and “design’s significant others” reshape participation, agency, and collaboration. We will discuss positions that critically address these dynamics, including ethical questions and the complexities of inclusion. How can Social Design foster new forms of solidarity in diverse societies? How might we rethink space, community, and non-human agency in light of environmental constraints and intergenerational justice?

New Conflicts, Old Identities

This track addresses the intersection of identity and conflict. As societies grapple with resurgent identity politics, moral absolutism, and deepening divides, Social Design can offer tools for fostering dialogue — even across polarized lines. We will explore:

Productive agonism vs. reconciliation
Redefining the "social" in times of social seclusion
Interventions that challenge entrenched narratives and foster complexity over simplicity
Shifting Lines of Capital and Privilege

As new forms of capital emerge — from data to cultural and social wealth — new types of poverty and inequality follow. How can Social Design engage with these shifts? This track is formed by contributions that rethink the economy of design, question value systems, and propose new models for redistribution, empowerment, and care.

Design in Datafied Societies

As AI, automation, and platform technologies reshape societies, design faces new ethical, political, and methodological challenges. This track explores how Social Design can respond to the complexities of digital transformation: questions of data ownership, algorithmic bias, and access to emerging technologies. How might we reclaim agency and foster justice in increasingly datafied contexts?

Pedagogies for (Eco-)Social Transformation

As society transforms, so must design education. This track explores how to prepare future designers to engage with complex societal challenges through critical, ethical, and collaborative capacities. What should design pedagogy prioritize? What should it let go of? Participants will share reflections, experiments, and provocations that reimagine education as a driver of transformation.