The Papanek Symposium 2026, a collaboration between Design History and Theory, University of Applied Arts Vienna, faculty of the National Institute of Design (NID), India and Quicksand design consultancy explores the practical, theoretical and social implications of contemporary design ‘in the field’, highlighting the imperative, and challenge, of shaping design and social policies from the ground-up. As an international hybrid event, it comprises online expert presentations and panel discussions with an onsite workshop in New Delhi, offering a unique insight into the legacies of past development agendas and the futures for design in shaping worlds and tackling social inequalities.

Bringing together designers, design strategists, social innovators and key thinkers from across India, the Papanek Symposium 2026 addresses vital contemporary questions of the discipline: What are the implications of design’s dispersed role as a mode of applied social science and the legacy of design and development models? How, if at all, are the forays design strategists make into local design cultures mutually beneficial? How are the asymmetrical power relations of corporate, NGO and small-scale social initiatives played out in practice? The event is aimed at designers, social innovators, social scientists, anthropologists and ethnographers, strategists and policy makers and is open to a diverse global audience.

Fielding Design: Reshaping Future Pasts 2026 is an event organised by the Department of Design History and Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria, as part of the FWF (Austrian Science Fund) research project directed by Professor Alison J. Clarke: Design Anthropology: Cold War Industrial Design & Development (Grant DOI 10.55776/PAT4411223).