etc. Lecture Series - Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Ethics, Technology and Culture (etc.) Lecture Series
We welcome colleagues, students, industry partners, policy makers, and members of the wider community to what promises to be a stimulating lecture entitled: Real (talk) > True (talk): Making space for making presented by Dr. Rilla Khaled.
Date: Thursday, 16th April, 2026
Time: 3pm - 4:30pm
Venue: The Concert Hall, East Quad, Grangegorman, Dublin 7
Free: Register Here
Curated and convened by Professor Taha Yasseri, Workday Chair of Technology and Society and sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities the etc. series serves as a forum for rigorous interdisciplinary inquiry into the evolving relationship between technological innovation and human experience. It seeks to foster substantive reflection on the ethical, cultural, and societal implications of emerging technologies by bringing together scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and members of the wider public. Through this convergence of perspectives, the series aims to illuminate the ethical questions and cultural transformations that accompany technological change, while promoting thoughtful and informed exchange across disciplinary and professional boundaries.
Lecture Abstract:
Questions that have occurred to every creative practitioner working in the academy:
Is a creative work like a peer reviewed publication?
Am I meant to be getting my work in front of maximal pairs of eyes?
How do I widely disseminate my work if it is not in easily distributable digital form?
Is force-fitting my practice-based work into traditional academic shape(s) the answer?
In my talk I will grapple with all the above from the perspective of academic design practice. I will present the Method for Design Materialization (MDM), a standardized approach to surfacing design practice logics and reasoning that I have been refining with my research team since 2017. Devised especially for materializing game and interaction design reasoning, and taking inspiration from prototyping theory, reflective practice, interaction design, software development, archival practice, and qualitative research, MDM involves methodical digital archiving and documentation of all stages of design and production, coupled with regular and reflective journaling by the designer.
Although MDM is primarily focused on methodology - how we engage in research - it has sparked reflection on epistemology - what knowledge such engagement results in.
I will draw on close to a decade of MDM to argue why real > true for academic creative practitioners and why our knowledge needs its own space and time.