Rate My Professor Ahmed Ansari

Ahmed Ansari is an Industry Associate Professor in Architecture and Design at New York University, serving in the Tandon School of Engineering's Department of Technology, Culture and Society and the Integrated Design and Media program. He earned a PhD in Design Studies (History, Theory, Criticism) and an MDes in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University, along with a BDes in Communication Design from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, where he received the IVSAA Founder’s Award and Saleem-us-Zaman Siddiqui Award for Best Student Dissertation. Before joining NYU in 2019, Ansari worked professionally as a graphic designer, user experience designer, and game designer. He has provided academic consulting on curriculum development for undergraduate design programs at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan, and is a founding member of the Decolonising Design platform and the Architecture Design Research Lab in Karachi. Ansari co-directs the PhD program in Human-Centered Design, Technology and Innovation.

Ansari's research interests span design studies and history, philosophy of technology, critical cultural studies, decolonization, and design theory with a focus on the Global South and the Indian subcontinent. His projects encompass digital platforms fostering public participation in science, interdisciplinary digital archives blending scientists, humanists, and artists, and a visual novel for NYU Tandon's IDBE initiative addressing campus politics of difference. He teaches studio courses in interaction, systemic, and game design, as well as seminars in qualitative design research, media studies, design studies, and history. Key publications include 'What is at stake with decolonizing design? A roundtable' (Design & Culture, 2018), 'A manifesto for decolonising design' (2019), 'Decolonizing design through the perspectives of cosmological others' (XRDS, 2019), and contributions to books such as Design in Crisis (2020) and Design Struggles (2021). Ansari organized the North American PhD by Design Symposium and contributed editorially to Design & Culture. His collaborative project 'Thinking with Moss' received a $50,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2022.