Jesse D. Jenkins is one of the leading contemporary figures thinking about energy futures and the project of deep decarbonization. He is currently an Environmental Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.His research focuses on the rapidly evolving electricity sector, including the transition to zero-carbon power systems and the proliferation of distributed energy resources. Jesse earned a PhD in... read more

The division of Liberal Arts, THAD department and RISD Museum welcome author and design historian Alison Clarke to RISD to give a lecture titled “Victor Papanek: Design, Ecology and Global Activism.”In 1968, Papanek described the design profession as a mode of “do-it-yourself murder” that generates waste, wreaks ecological havoc and excludes the most socially disadvantaged. Design, he warned,... read more

Members of the RISD community will be joined by Professor Alison J. Clarke, University of Applied Arts Vienna, to discuss Victor Papanek’s influential 1971 book Design for the Real World. Papanek challenged designers to remake their profession by questioning the imperatives of modernism and commercialism and developing a practice critically attuned to social and environmental... read more

Delhi-based artist Asim Waqif will discuss his work and then participate in a panel discussion along with RISD faculty members Namita Dharia and Lili Hermann about sustainibility, environmentalism and more. Waqif studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. After initially working as an art director for film and television, he later started making independent videos... read more

The Liberal Arts division and Literary Arts + Studies department welcome writer/activist Matt Hern for a talk called Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale. Hern is co-author of the recent book Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life (MIT, 2018), which charts multiple trips through the tar sands of northern Alberta and documents the effects... read more

The President’s Office and Social Equity and Inclusion Initiative welcome Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, director, producer, activist and educator Lynn Nottage to RISD. Nottage engages some of our most intractable problems, both on and off the stage, and her practice is characterized by extensive research while writing and continued involvement with subject... read more

Amy Lee Sanford, a Cambodian-American artist with an international reputation, will participate in the RISD Museum’s exhibition “Repair and Design Futures” through a powerful, one-afternoon performance of a gallery installation entitled “Break Pot”, a shortened version of a 28-day performance called “Full Circle.”

Sanford’s work references the deep personal significance of family... read more

At a time when climate politics would seem to be stuck between a state of “melancholic paralysis” (Wark, 2015) and “passive nihilism” (Connolly, 2016), mobilizations occurring around just transitions stand as one of the few bright spots on the horizon. Discussions of just transitions are at different stages of development. They come with the usual bundle of issues, problems,... read more