Workshop: Design, Diversity and Our Future World

With guest Speakers:

Associate Professor Victoria Bates, University of Bristol

Victoria is Associate Professor in Modern Medical History at the University of Bristol. She was awarded a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship (2020-2027) for the project Sensing Spaces of Healthcare: Rethinking the NHS Hospital, which asks how people have experienced hospitals through time, and the legacy of their perceptions in current hospital design.

It will create the first sensory history of hospitals. Harnessing participatory practices, her research is creating a novel multidisciplinary methodology for eliciting memories and sensations of hospitals, which will encourage new ways of thinking and practices among researchers, architects, and designers. Victoria’s recent books are Making Noise in the Modern Hospital (2021), and Feeling blue: Colour and the modern British hospital (2025).

Dr Maria Zelenskaya, QUT School of Creative Arts

Maria Zelenskaya is a lecturer in animation at the Queensland University of Technology. Her research focuses on motion capture and sign language avatars, combining creative practice with emerging technologies. Through a co-creative, community-based approach to design, Maria explores how inclusive technologies can be codesigned with users to ensure accessibility, cultural relevance, and meaningful impact. Her work bridges animation, human-computer interaction, and social inclusion, contributing to the development of tools that enhance communication and participation for people with disabilities.

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