Gendered geographies of online gaming: a Brazil/UK comparative case study of gendered spatial practices of inclusion, exclusion and agency in the MOBA League of Legends

The digital, a complex assemblage of ontics, aesthetics, logics and discourses (Ash, Kitchin and Leszczynski, 2016), is now ingrained in geographical inquiries. Computer and videogames, genuinely geographical objects, appear at the vanguard of technology development, by connecting sophisticated works of art to entertainment and communication systems, arousing industries and markets around the Western world. Nevertheless, inequalities still haunt the access and advancement of digital technologies, creating absences and obscurities across the spaces of the digital, and that includes the realm of games. Scaffolded by a feminist standpoint, this research explores some aspects of digital inequalities by attending to how gendered spatial practices of inclusion, exclusion and agency are manifest within online gaming spaces. To examine these dynamics in their socio-cultural context, the massive online battle arena (MOBA) League of Legends was chosen as instrumental case study, where two different communities of players in Brazil and the United Kingdom were investigated. To answer the research question, a mixed-methods approach encompassing online surveys and semi-structured online interviews, informed by supportive participant observation, has provided rich quantitative and qualitative data. Abductive analysis, sustained by a multifaceted disciplinary conceptual framework, comprised descriptive statistics, content and thematic analysis. As a result, this research illuminates the nature of the gendered relations at play in the production of digital spaces of League, as well as the formation of homosocial spaces within the game. This innovative study has thus evidenced the gendered character of League of Legends’ spaces by unearthing the complex entanglements of identification and belonging, articulated and disputed through practices of antagonism and rapport enacted through online misbehaviour, homosociality and friendship. These findings have advanced the field of digital geographies by employing a feminist purchase to the production of digital spaces while expanding the contextual focus of game studies to Northern Europe and Latin America

The Way We Play: Exploring the specifics of formation, action and competition in digital gameplay among World of Warcraft raiders

This thesis explores the specific practices of group gameplay (called ‘raiding’) in the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMO). In particular, it presents ethnographic research conducted by the author between 2009 and 2012 where she studied raiding in World of Warcraft (WoW), a game environment that is a complicated and malleable space with many pathways of play built into it, not the least of which are the particular ways that raiders choose to shape and sustain their play experience. Building on Galloway’s ‘four moments of gamic action’ as a theoretical framework from which to consider gamic representation among raiders and through ethnographic research on raiding gameplay practices, this thesis considers the ways that formation, competition and gamic action have distinguished raiding within the online, persistent game environment, forming to become a set of interwoven principles that work in concert to sustain long-term raiding activity. The objective of this thesis is twofold: first, to contribute to the gap in games research on raiding gameplay practices in MMOs; and second, to consider how the study of online group play through the context of MMO raiding can impact further geographical research into the digital game, particularly within the contexts of the virtual and playful. Conclusions drawn from this work suggest that the study of game raiding (and its persistence) offers an important perspective to understanding the nature of the complex online game environment; an environment that is at once controlled and malleable, multisensory and immersive, engaging yet sustaining, and complex yet localized, creating many simultaneous moments in gamic action where these representations of space, action, formation and competition function not so much to define gameplay but more so to shape and enable it

AN ENACTIVE APPROACH TO TECHNOLOGICALLY MEDIATED LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

This thesis investigated the application of enactive principles to the design of classroom technolo- gies for young children’s learning through play. This study identified the attributes of an enactive pedagogy, in order to develop a design framework to accommodate enactive learning processes. From an enactive perspective, the learner is defined as an autonomous agent, capable of adapta- tion via the recursive consumption of self generated meaning within the constraints of a social and material world. Adaptation is the parallel development of mind and body that occurs through inter- action, which renders knowledge contingent on the environment from which it emerged. Parallel development means that action and perception in learning are as critical as thinking. An enactive approach to design therefore aspires to make the physical and social interaction with technology meaningful to the learning objective, rather than an aside to cognitive tasks. The design framework considered in detail the necessary affordances in terms of interaction, activity and context. In a further interpretation of enactive principles, this thesis recognised play and pretence as vehicles for designing and evaluating enactive learning and the embodied use of technology. In answering the research question, the interpreted framework was applied as a novel approach to designing and analysing children’s engagement with technology for learning, and worked towards a paradigm where interaction is part of the learning experience. The aspiration for the framework was to inform the design of interaction modalities to allow users’ to exercise the inherent mechanisms they have for making sense of the world. However, before making the claim to support enactive learning processes, there was a question as to whether technologically mediated realities were suitable environments to apply this framework. Given the emphasis on the physical world and action, it was the intention of the research and design activities to explore whether digital artefacts and spaces were an impoverished reality for enactive learning; or if digital objects and spaces could afford sufficient ’reality’ to be referents in social play behaviours. The project embedded in this research was tasked with creating deployable technologies that could be used in the classroom. Consequently, this framework was applied in practice, whereby the design practice and deployed technologies served as pragmatic tools to investigate the potential for interactive technologies in children’s physical, social and cognitive learning. To understand the context, underpin the design framework, and evaluate the impact of any techno- logical interventions in school life, the design practice was informed by ethnographic methodologies. The design process responded to cascading findings from phased research activities. The initial fieldwork located meaning making activities within the classroom, with a view to to re-appropriating situated and familiar practices. In the next stage of the design practice, this formative analysis determined the objectives of the participatory sessions, which in turn contributed to the creation of technologies suitable for an inquiry of enactive learning. The final technologies used standard school equipment with bespoke software, enabling children to engage with real time compositing and tracking applications installed in the classrooms’ role play spaces. The evaluation of the play space technologies in the wild revealed under certain conditions, there was evidence of embodied presence in the children’s social, physical and affective behaviour - illustrating how mediated realities can extend physical spaces. These findings suggest that the attention to meaningful interaction, a presence in the environment as a result of an active role, and a social presence - as outlined in the design framework - can lead to the emergence of observable enactive learning processes. As the design framework was applied, these principles could be examined and revised. Two notable examples of revisions to the design framework, in light of the applied practice, related to: (1) a key affordance for meaningful action to emerge required opportunities for direct and immediate engagement; and (2) a situated awareness of the self and other inhabitants in the mediated space required support across the spectrum of social interaction. The application of the design framework enabled this investigation to move beyond a theoretical discourse

Cadenland: An Ethnographic Case Study Exploring a Male's Videogaming Literacies on Crayta Within the Larger Stadia Culture

As content creation becomes more accessible and social through gaming, defying hardware barriers, not deterred by software interfaces, moving gaming into the cloud has made it a massive multiplier for players to explore their literacies and creativity without the clutter of the physical space. Videogaming's popularity has sparked controversy, especially the perception of videogames as violent and having a negative influence on players or having no social value in it. Hence, the need to create a balance by focusing on the merits inherent in videogames. This virtual ethnographic case study explored the literacies found in a 26-year-old male gamer's videogaming on Crayta within a larger Stadia cloud gaming community. The methodology included observations, semistructured and unstructured interviews, in-game chats, game-based artifacts, and thematic analysis to analyze the data gathered from the participant. Findings reveal how videogaming experience enhanced the participant's engagement, resulting in four significant literacy outcomes. Results are discussed regarding implications for collaboration, creativity and innovation, critical strategic thinking, and social skills. Included is a hybrid theoretical framework of layered literacies and the feedback loop for examining the lived-in experiences of the participant

Landscapes in Flux. Book of Proceedings

Peer reviewed proceedings ECLAS 2015 Conference|21 to 23 September| Department of Landscape Architecture, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, EstoniaEvery scientific paper published in these Conference Proceedings was peer reviewed. All explanations, data, results, etc. contained in this book have been made by authors to their best knowledge and were true and accurate at the time of publication. However, some errors could not be excluded, so neither the publisher, the editors, nor the authors can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors and omissions that may be made. © All rights reserved. No part of these proceedings may be reproduced by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.Department of Landscape Architecture, Estonian University of Life Sciences On behalf of European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS

Intelligence, Creativity and Fantasy

UID/HIS/04666/2019 This is the 2nd volume of PHI series, published by CRC Press, the 4th published by CRC Press and the 5th volume of PHI proceedings.The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) - INTELLIGENCE, CREATIVITY AND FANTASY were compiled with the intent to establish a multidisciplinary platform for the presentation, interaction and dissemination of research. The aim is also to foster the awareness and discussion on the topics of Harmony and Proportion with a focus on different visions relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design, Engineering, Social and Natural Sciences, and their importance and benefits for the sense of both individual and community identity. The idea of modernity has been a significant motor for development since the Western Early Modern Age. Its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts.authorsversionpublishe

Hands-on Science. Advancing Science. Improving Education

The book herein aims to contribute to the advancement of Science to the improvement of Science Education and to an effective implementation of a sound widespread scientific literacy at all levels of society. Its chapters reunite a variety of diverse and valuable works presented in this line of thought at the 15th International Conference on Hands-on Science “Advancing Science. Improving Education

Towards the Common Good: An expansive post-abyssal (Re)stor(y)ing of the epistemic cultures of the citizen sciences

In this study I explore and explain transformatiThe citizen sciences convene complex and reflexive ecologies of knowledges in response to a range of social-ecological risks. Their epistemic cultures seem to be assembled in ways which increase potential mobilisation of the common knowledges being produced, thereby producing knowledges in forms that are more strongly aligned with a range of implementation strategies. However, much of such processes of knowledge production have been ‘cleaned out’ of official accounts through scientifically hegemonic systems of legitimation, deepening hegemonically-entrenched systems of epistemic, contributory and distributive injustices, and undermining the potential for stronger enactments of participatory and radical democracies. The engagement of sociologies of absences and emergences in this study evidence these epistemic insights, thereby evidencing an expansive post-abyssal (re)stor(y)ing of the citizen sciences. Through this research, I consider knowledge production as ‘commoning', towards the constitution of the common good. To date, most accounts of knowledge production within citizen science projects primarily focus on scientific processes of knowledge production and legitimation. Such accounts neglect the ecologies of diverse knowledges through which knowledge is being collaboratively produced, the forms of learning that occur, or the ways in which such ecologies are mobilised in response to specific socialecological risks. To better understand the ways in which citizen science projects build risk-responsive common knowledge, I bring a focus to the diversity of epistemic cultures convened, speaking to this gap. My primary research question is: How do the epistemic cultures within citizen science projects enable commoning in response to social-ecological risk? To begin, I establish a particular vantage point from which the remainder of the thesis is launched, one which centres as the primary interest of knowledge production, an interest in social-ecological justice and the constitution of the common good. From this vantage point, knowledge co-production and learning can be viewed as acts of commoning, which themselves constitute common goods. I draw on the work of Karin Knorr Cetina to conceptualise and frame notions of epistemic cultures and their epistemic features. Expanding notions of epistemic cultures from a post-abyssal perspective, I draw on the work of Bruno Latour and Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Latour’s distinctions between the production of ‘matters of fact’ and ‘matters of concern’ provide a way to challenge hegemonic systems of scientific knowledge production, while preserving the potential emergence of multiplicity in the context of evolving risk, thereby enabling a greater degree of situated reflexivity. Santos argues for the reclamation of all ways of knowing, including but not limited to scientific ways of knowing the world. He argues that other forms of knowledge are produced as nonexistent, and that they might be reclaimed through engaging sociologies of absences and emergences. Both authors enable a stronger analysis of knowledge production in terms of its ability to intervene into context in response to manifest risks. These three theoretical approaches are convened into an analytical framework for the study. To enact sociologies of absences and emergences, I engage two forms of immanent critique, complemented by an epistemic mapping of 50 South African citizen science projects, and an analysis of three illustrative case studies. The first critique is one of produced nonexistence, through which I consider three aspects of the general knowledge cultures within which the epistemic cultures of citizen science projects are situated. This critique makes evident the ways in which the ontological and related conceptual structures of hegemonic scientific knowledge production actively produce as nonexistent, other onto-epistemic contributions to knowledge production in response to social-ecological risks. The second critique reviews the field of peer-reviewed literature through a reading of presence and absence, with a focus on the articulation of epistemic cultures. Predictably, a key finding is that this form of scientific reporting primarily foregrounds legitimated scientifically processed knowledge, while once again producing as nonexistent, other forms of knowledges. However, there is evidence of increasing accounts of citizen science which recognise both a diversity of knowledge contributions, and epistemic, contributory and distributive justice issues as regards hegemonic forms of reporting. The epistemic mapping evidences a highly diversified field of citizen sciences, whose epistemic cultures are convened to produce distinct forms of scientifically-informed knowledges in response to diverse contexts, scales and notions of risk. The three illustrative case studies engage sociologies of absences and emergences, with particular focus on articulating the ecologies of knowledges evidenced in project documentation, including both official and unofficial accounts of epistemic activity. This analysis highlights the significant contributions of diverse forms of knowledges, including scientific, situated, embodied, governance, indigenous, spiritual and relational knowledges, and the ways in which these knowledge are convened to respond to specific configurations of risk. It once again highlights issues of epistemic, contributory and distributive justice, and makes evident the need for stronger integrity in processes of producing and reporting common knowledges. The case studies also illustrate the increased effectiveness of leveraging an ecology of knowledges (in contrast to a monoculture of scientific knowledge) in response to situated risks, including how such ecologies have a tendency to be generative and enable multiple forms of intervention into structures and applied contexts of intervention. In response to the collective research findings, a think-piece on rigour-as-integrity is offered as a contribution to commoning, in response to social-ecological risk. The piece draws together a postabyssal system of rigour intended to strengthen knowledge production in ways which actively centre forms of justice and commoning. ve potential in arts-based environmental learning with a focus on water pedagogy. The study took place over a period of four years, where approximately 40 school pupils between the ages of 10 and 17 years-old were engaged in participatory arts-based inquiries into water located across unequal neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. Educators, school learners, citizens and decision-makers hold different historical, cultural, political and spiritual perspectives on water. These play a role in shaping what is termed in this research the ‘hydro-social cycle’. Yet, due to dominant ideas of what counts as knowing and truth, educators in educational settings struggle to account for the complexity of water, limiting educational encounters to a partial knowing leading mostly to limited unimaginative framings of problems and solutions. My focus on transformative potential in learning is derived from a concern for how environmental education encounters and the sense-making they enable, are infused by socio-economic, political, and historical elements, specifically colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacist racism. The connections between the multiple layers of capitalist crisis and the ever-urgent environmental crisis are not adequately made in mainstream forms of water education. The research explores how arts-based pedagogy could enable a productive meeting of critical environmental education with ecological literacies. Within this positioning, transformative potential considers how educational engagements position questions about water within the social life of participants/learners and inform learning that leads to fuller and more nuanced greater knowledge. Theoretically, I work with an interrogation of critical education theory, underlaboured by critical realism which enabled me to rigorously consider how claims to knowing are shaped by their accompanying assumptions of what is real. Drawing on recent debates in critical education theory, I resist the notion of critique as ideology and engage instead in the craftsmanship of contextual and responsive inquiry practice. This has enabled me to articulate processes and relationships in water education encounters with meaningful understandings of the effects of simultaneous crises rooted in racial capitalism and environmental crisis. My methodological approach is arts-based educational research with a directive to reflect upon educational encounters in an integrated way. It includes two parts informing the facilitation and analysis of open-ended learning processes. One component was arts-based inquiry practice developed for exploring complexity, drawing on the thinking of Norris (2009, 2011) and Finley (2016, 2017). The second part holds reflective space for these encounters guided by the practice of pedagogical narration inspired by the Reggio Amelia approach, demonstrated by Pacini-Ketchabaw, Nxumalo, Kocher, Elliot and Sanchez (2014). Clarifying the intellectual work of a responsive educator-researcher, pedagogical narration brings multiple theoretical lenses into conversation with emergent dimensions of educational process. In practice, in order to transgress the dominance of colonial white supremacist knowledge frames of water, I needed to be curious, to be confounded, to expect the unexpected in the educational encounters with participants and this mirroring of practice was emulated by the participants as they followed their own questions about water in Mzansi (South Africa). In our work together we came up against assumptions we had previously not questioned as individuals. Together we explored the implications of this by, for example, questioning who is responsible for saving water. These explorations required bringing together science knowledge and everyday knowledge at multiple scales: the household, catchment, government and global. It required us to be critical of how language and images are mobilized in public communication and school curriculums; for example, representations of water are infused with history and power in a way that impacts how we know and teach about water. The transformative potential of this pedagogical space is generated through acts of creative expression which are seen as acts of absenting absence, for example exhibiting through play how water use in the household interconnects with gender and age relationships. As such, creative expression through multiple mediums or more-than-text enables a deeper understanding of water as well as openings for interdisciplinary engagement with learning about water. My research found that in bringing together the contributions of critical education and environmental education in practice, two shifts are needed: environmental educators need to view ecological literacy as inseparable from the social and political. The knowledge that is shared about water in the classroom has social and political implications. On the other hand, critical educators need to better locate justice concerns in the material and ecological world at scale. Arts-based inquiry, as a kind of scaffolding for pedagogical process, has the potential to enable these shifts by opening up fixed analytical frames. Making these shifts requires a reflective practice on the part of the educator to navigate the inherited blind spots in environmental learning and critical education, such as dualities. One way to do this is for the educator to identify absences, as articulated in the Critical Realist tradition, and consider how these absences might be absented. This differs from a simplistic process of critique in the possibilities it opens up for collaboration between different schools of thought rather than further polarisation and alienation between educators and knowledge keepers on social ecologies. These insights have relevance for many sites of environmental education practice, such as natural science lecturers, school teachers or community activists. It is knowledge-learning work emergent from and responsive to complex ecological crisis, which requires everyone to rethink and open up to new ways of being, seeing and doing around these issues. The transformative potential of this work is that the thinking and transforming at all scales can be catalysed and grounded through the arts based educational encounters with the participants.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education, 202

Konkreettisiin materiaaleihin perustuvat menetelmät palvelumuotoilutyöpajassa turvapaikanhakijoiden kanssa

The side effects of war and turmoil in Syria, Iraq, the Middle East and North Africa have recently reached Europe and Finland. Many kinds of actions have been taken on various societal levels to process the case of each asylum seeker with dignity. Accommodating thousands of people in reception centres throughout Finland has not been a simple task. The practice of service design has a promising theoretical basis for making sustainable and impactful interventions to solve the complex problems generated by the crisis. A human-centred and holistic approach enables it to address the dynamic, interlinked networks of value co-creation. By including stakeholder representatives in design activities, such as workshops, service designers can better understand the context they are designing for and the people they are designing with. It has been argued that using tangible materials in those workshops helps sharing of knowledge, engages everyone to participate, and mitigates communication problems. This thesis aims at testing the assumptions about tangibility in a challenging context, a service co-design workshop with students and asylum seekers. The thesis begins with a literature review, describing the theoretical roots of service design, discussing aspects of stakeholder inclusion, and presenting tangible service design methods. Based on the literature review, the thesis asks, how tangible materials contribute to the work of a cross-cultural service co-design team with inherent power imbalance. The research question is considered from three perspectives, democracy & inclusion, communication & shared understanding, and perceived quality of the result. The second main part of the thesis, the explorative case study, seeks to answer the research question by investigating a service co-design workshop, Fjord X Fablab Makeshop: Asylum Seekers in Finland. The workshop was arranged by the author together with design consultancy Fjord, Aalto Media Factory, and a local asylum seeker reception centre, operated by Finnish Red Cross. Observations and interviews provide some evidence for the positive contribution of tangible materials to communication within the team and perceived quality of their work, whereas findings related to inclusiveness remain limited. Other factors, such as facilitation, work environment, and personal qualities of the participants, have at least as big influence on the work of such team as the use of tangible materials. The results of the case study for the most part align with the existing literature. Based on the experience, the thesis gives a set of recommendations for practitioners who wish to employ tangible materials to service co-design workshops with marginalised people groups.Sodat ja levottomuudet Lähi-idässä ja Pohjois-Afrikassa ovat näkyneet viime aikoina myös Euroopassa ja Suomessa. Saapuvien turvapaikanhakijoiden ihmisarvoinen käsittely ja majoittaminen vastaanottokeskuksiin ympäri Suomea ei ole ollut helppo tehtävä. Palvelumuotoilulla on lupaava teoreettinen perusta kestävien ja vaikuttavien toimenpiteiden toteuttamiseksi ja kriisistä aiheutuvien kompleksisten ongelmien ratkaisemiseksi. Käyttäjäkeskeisen ja holistisen otteen ansiosta palvelumuotoilijat kykenevät hahmottamaan dynaamisia verkostoja joissa eri toimijat liittyvät toisiinsa luoden arvoa yhteistyössä. Osallistamalla sidosryhmien edustajia esimerkiksi työpajoissa palvelumuotoilijat voivat paremmin ymmärtää muotoilun kontekstia ja ihmisiä, joiden kanssa palvelua kehitetään. Väitetään, että konkreettisiin materiaaleihin liittyvät menetelmät, joissa osallistujat käyttävät monipuolisesti käsiään ja kehoaan pelkän kynän ja paperin sijaan, helpottavat tiedon yhteisluontia, jokaisen osallistumista työhön, sekä vähentävät kommunikaatio-ongelmia. Tämän diplomityön tarkoituksena on kokeilla konkreettisia materiaaleja haastavassa kontekstissa: palvelumuotoilun työpajassa opiskelijoiden ja turvapaikanhakijoiden kanssa. Diplomityö alkaa kirjallisuuskatsauksella, joka käy läpi palvelumuotoilun teoreettisen taustan, käsittelee sidosryhmien osallistamista ja esittelee konkreettisiin materiaaleihin liittyviä menetelmiä palvelumuotoilussa. Katsauksen perusteella kysytään, miten konkreettiset materiaalit tukevat sellaisen monikulttuurisen palvelumuotoilutiimin työtä, jonka jäsenet eivät ole keskenään yhdenvertaisessa asemassa. Tutkimuskysymystä tarkastellaan kolmesta näkökulmasta: demokratia ja osallistaminen, kommunikaatio ja jaettu ymmärrys, sekä koettu lopputuloksen laatu. Työn toisen pääosan muodostava tapaustutkimus käsittelee palvelumuotoilun työpajaa, Fjord X Fablab Makeshop: Asylum Seekers in Finland. Kirjoittaja järjesti työpajan yhteistyössä muotoilutoimisto Fjordin, Aalto Media Factoryn ja paikallisen, Suomen Punaisen Ristin ylläpitämän vastaanottokeskuksen kanssa. Havainnot ja haastattelut antavat tukea väitteille konkreettisten materiaalien positiivisesta vaikutuksesta tiimin kommunikaatioon ja koettuun lopputuloksen laatuun, mutta osallistamiseen liittyvät löydöt ovat heikompia. Muut tekijät, kuten fasilitointi, työskentely-ympäristö sekä henkilötason ominaisuudet vaikuttivat vähintään yhtä paljon tiimien työskentelyyn kuin konkreettisten materiaalien käyttö. Tulokset ovat pääosin linjassa kirjallisuuden kanssa. Lopuksi esitetään joukko suosituksia palvelumuotoilusta kiinnostuneille. Kohdeyleisönä ovat erityisesti palvelumuotoilijat, jotka suunnittelevat vastaavien menetelmien käyttöä työpaljoissa turvapaikanhakijoiden tai muiden heikommassa sosiaalisessa asemassa olevien henkilöiden kanssa

Experiencing participation:a phenomenological study of the transforming of a rooftop in Manchester, UK (2014-2016) and the methodological reframing of research through design

The intertwining of social interaction - digital and physical and private and public - is described by information systems research as ‘The Digital Workplace’ and by architects and urban planners as ‘The Public Mesh’. To exemplify these concepts, this thesis investigates how the the organisational context is changing. To navigate this organisational context, a Multi-Dimensional Ensemble (MDE) lens has been developed and constructed, through which the social life across social-technical/digital-spatial temporal dimensions may be explored. The primary case study is ‘The Rooftop Project’ (TRP). Responding to the lack of green and outdoor social space in Manchester’s City Centre, TRP is situated in the Northern Quarter and described in this thesis as a grassroots project that experimented with the transformation of a 300m2 rooftop. To better understand the principles and value of RtD, TRP posed the question; how does an open process of experiencing design and designing experience unfold and evolve? An in-depth literature survey of Research through Design (RtD) and systems thinking in Action Research (AR) and Information Systems (IS) unpacks the importance of framing inquiry through design (as experience and participation). In response to this, the designer researcher draws theoretical inspiration from a combination of sociological, curatorial, HCI, design and anthropological viewpoints. In order to gain greater insight into the value and efficacy of RtD, a methodical account of TRP in the form of A Porftolio of RtD is presented. In the first person, a phenomenological inquiry into RtD is undertaken in TRP from the perspective of a designer-activist-researcher. These first-person accounts convey the multiplicity, complexity, conflicts, resolutions and tensions experienced as a result of a combinatory methodological approach. Situtated in TRP, the designer researcher demonstrates how this RtD methodology activates ‘an unfolding awareness’. Positioned in this thesis as addressing the theoretical concerns of Organisational Studies (OS), AR in IS and RtD, the methodology is illustrated in the form of a spring. Contributions to theory and implications to practice are explicated, these illuminate RtD’s community of practice and how it can extend to OS, AR in IS, urban design, community engagement and architectural practice