Sarah Fathallah

California College of the Arts · Department of Design

Safety is a human right and universal need, and yet we as researchers and practitioners often take for granted the conditions that help people feel safe. In this conceptual review, we focus on factors that contribute to people’s sense of safety in service of understanding how, when, and where people feel safe. Moreover, we consider how race, power,...

Design research can help us understand, dismantle, and transform unjust systems and the material realities that they create, while guiding us towards transformative, radical futures yet to be designed. However, design research can also be a site of harm and trauma. We argue that a “do no harm” guiding principle to ethics in design research is insuf...

Mandatory reporting laws require the reporting to a designated government agency of a known or suspected case of abuse or neglect of children, elders, or other dependent adults. While these laws vary, researchers can be mandated to report suspected cases of abuse or neglect under a wide range of circumstances. This paper argues that a survivor-cent...

Design thinking has failed to deliver on its promise to solve the world’s thorniest social challenges. Adopting a critical design stance can help designers serve communities, rather than their own methodology.

Across the country, far too many young people age out of foster care into appalling circumstances. “Aging out” occurs when youth under the state’s custody are still in the foster care system when they reach either the age of majority or the end of extended foster care. Aging out refers to the moment in time when child welfare is no longer legally...

American policing has always faced crises: of legitimacy, of efficacy, of budgeting, of racist discrimination, and of heinous violence. Over the last year, radical calls to defund, disarm, and disband police departments drowned out the historically widely-accepted explanations of these crises. Black women have always led these calls, but in 2020 mu...

A study by Think Of Us, engaging 78 young people with recent lived experience in institutional placements. 2 www.thinkof-us.org Away From Home Youth Experiences of Institutional Placements in Foster Care Dedication Thank you to all 78 research participants who gracefully opened your hearts and shared your stories, art, and visions for transformativ...

This Discussion Guide is a companion to the Away From Home: Youth Experiences of Institutional Placements in Foster Care study. It provides guided reading and discussion questions for foster youth, child welfare professionals, academics and researchers, policy makers, and other curious minds to explore and reflect on the book a little deeper, eithe...

Ethnographic research into the sesame ecosystem in Myanmar, on behalf of local social enterprise, Proximity Designs. For a full list of contributors consult the colophon.