Profile
Carmem Saito is a doctoral researcher at the Institute for Design Innovation and a Technē grantee by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) researching fashion consumption in digital contexts.
Academic Background
Carmem holds a BA in Fashion Design from Faculdade Santa Marcelina, in São Paulo, Brazil, and an MA in Integrated Design as part of the fashion studio (Mode, Mensch und Gesellschaft) from the Hochschule für Künste Bremen in Germany. Prior to undertaking this PhD position, she worked for over fifteen years in various creative roles in the fashion and tech industries.
PhD research
Carmem’s research offers an exploratory and critical examination of fashion consumption in digital contexts. The study interrogates how technologies of consumption imagined, designed, and used, and how it could be done otherwise. Instead of contributing to efforts aimed at optimising or enhancing these technologies, the research delves into the inherent contradictions embedded in current systems of fashion consumption.
Titled Sensing Wishlists, the study positions wishlists—an essential feature of e-commerce platforms—as both a practical tool and a metaphor for the act of desiring things which are often unattainable or unrealistic. The research employs design research methodologies, using qualitative approaches informed by digital ethnography, to explore themes in depth.
Supervisor(s): Dr. Ksenija Kuzmina and Prof. Mikko Koria
Awards, grants or scholarships received
This research is funded by Technē, a Doctoral Training Partnership award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Papers, publications and articles
Saito, C., Gonzatto, R.F., and van Amstel, F. (2024) Anticolonial prospects for overcoming the coloniality of making in design, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA.
Saito, Carmem; Van Amstel, Frederick M. C.; Serpa, Bibiana O; Angelon, Rafaela. Wicked rituals of contemporary design thinking. (2023). In: Mehl, Johanna and Höfler, Carolin (Eds). Attending [to] Futures. Matters of Politics in Design Education, Research, Practice. Hamburg: Adocs. p. 150-161.
Saito, C. (2021, October 27). #Fashion #SustainableFashion #FashionFutures. Futuress.