Through research, teaching, and community engagement, I am committed to empowering the next generation of socially-aware designers.

Gabriele Ferri, Assistant Professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Department of Industrial Design, is a socially engaged design researcher and educator. He works at the intersection of Design Justice and Transforming Practices. With a methodology merging design critiques, ethnography, speculative fabulation, and research through design, he first investigates how injustice is perpetuated through design artifacts and then collaborates with communities to create more equitable alternatives. His efforts aim to address systemic challenges while also advocating for individual rights, such as the Right to Repair.

Ferri's commitment to exploring the consequences of design, both intended and unintended, is constant in his transdisciplinary career. He co-organizes and chairs initiatives like Politics of Design @ Dutch Design Week 2023 and Design & The City, fostering critical dialogues on design ethics. His publications offer critiques of the political implications of design and technologies, including large language models and blockchain. Through situated design interventions, he encourages community engagement and discussion around matters of social concern, and he mentors design students in projects that intersect justice, culture, politics, and societal transformation.

Gabriele Ferri earned a PhD in Semiotics in 2011 (Università di Bologna and Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Firenze, Italy), complemented by research visits at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Following various teaching roles in Italy, he joined Indiana University Bloomington, USA, in 2013 as an ISTC-Social Postdoctoral Researcher (Intel Corporation). In 2015, Ferri moved to the Netherlands to contribute to the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS), where he was instrumental in developing, coordinating, and then directing the M.Sc. Digital Design, the institution's first design master’s program. At AUAS, he was also Senior Researcher in Civic Interaction Design. In 2022, seeking new research opportunities at a technical university, Ferri transitioned to Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).