Transmission in Motion Seminar (2020-2021): “Designing for Serendipity” – Ilona Domen, Merel van Goch, Anastasia Hacopian, Anne Kustritz, Rianne van Lambalgen, Toine Minnaert, Florentine Sterk, Iris van der Tuin and Roosmarijn van Woerden (Utrecht University)

Serendipity is a much-discussed theme in and around current-day academia. Do interdisciplinary encounters foster serendipitous connections and insights? Is interdisciplinarity itself boosted by serendipity? Do serendipitous discoveries take flight in the algorithmic condition or do they fall flat? Does researching,  teaching, and learning online kill the creativity of serendipitous encounters? In this session of the TiM seminar on “Knowledge in Making – Design by Doing” we focus on the epistemological paradox of serendipity per se, namely the fact that quite some knowledge and insight is needed in order for a scholar or a student to recognize something as a serendipitous discovery or encounter (Darbellay et al. 2014). For this reason, we will focus on the phenomenon of “Designing for Serendipity”. How can this be done? Can this be done at all? Together we will explore several types of designs, each of them aiming at facilitating serendipity. Participants will be encouraged to test and reflect on the designs as well.

To visit the virtual museum ‘Designing for Serendipity, SILT – Exhibition’, click here.

Suggested reading

• Darbellay, Frédéric, Zoe Moody, Ayuko Sedooka and Gabriela Steffen. 2014. “Interdisciplinary Research Boosted by Serendipity.” Creativity Research Journal 26 (1): 1-10. https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.library.uu.nl/doi/full/10.1080/10400419.2014.873653

The session will be moderated by SILT (Subjects in Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching).

SILT is one of the research themes of Transmission in Motion. SILT borrows from and adds to the Scholarship of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning – “SoITL” – but also reflects on SoITL as a subject of research. This implies that interdisciplinarity is both practiced and studied—as both a buzzword and a practice. What can interdisciplinary teaching and learning bring to academic settings, students, and researchers today? What are the best practices of interdisciplinarity and what are their effects? How should the practices best look and why? How are practices of interdisciplinary teaching and learning entangled with (media) technological developments, and societal processes and challenges? The focus of SILT is on interdisciplinarity as a complex theme in itself, a theme that is often mobilized for complexity. We study both students and teachers, and their situated relating.

*Image credits: “Museum fractal” by kevin dooley is licensed under CC BY 2.0