Abstract
This paper explores how posthuman design researchers operationalise the values inherent to their research as an everyday practice of care, messiness, and partiality. Drawing on five in-depth interviews and employing diffractive analysis through posthuman and feminist care ethics lenses, the study highlights how practitioners enact plural, situated, and reflexive approaches to method. The findings distil theoretical commitments into actionable suggestions and everyday ethics, underscoring the significance of relational accountability in design research. Implications are discussed for legitimising care-centred methods, reframing design research, and supporting systemic change. In foregrounding posthuman approaches and ethics as ongoing attunement, this research offers practical strategies for “staying with the trouble” within more-than-human worlds.
Keywords
Posthuman Design, Posthuman Ethics, Feminist New Materialism, More-than-human Design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1062
Citation
Ferreira, M., Henriques, A., Strohmayer, A., and Nisi, V. (2026) Practical ways of staying with the trouble: Enacting posthuman ethics through design practice, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1062
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Practical ways of staying with the trouble: Enacting posthuman ethics through design practice
This paper explores how posthuman design researchers operationalise the values inherent to their research as an everyday practice of care, messiness, and partiality. Drawing on five in-depth interviews and employing diffractive analysis through posthuman and feminist care ethics lenses, the study highlights how practitioners enact plural, situated, and reflexive approaches to method. The findings distil theoretical commitments into actionable suggestions and everyday ethics, underscoring the significance of relational accountability in design research. Implications are discussed for legitimising care-centred methods, reframing design research, and supporting systemic change. In foregrounding posthuman approaches and ethics as ongoing attunement, this research offers practical strategies for “staying with the trouble” within more-than-human worlds.