IDEAS Festival 2026 – Designing for Resilience

The HASS cluster is excited to invite you to a featured session at this year’s IDEAS Festival 2026, a nationwide showcase of cutting-edge insights from humanities and social science research on the theme of “resilience”.

In this cross-disciplinary session, we will explore how design practice and theory can contribute to building more resilient forms of life, not merely coping with adversity but enabling communities to adapt, care for one another, and thrive under pressure. 

Rather than treating design only as a tool for erasing problems within the status quo, the session asks how design can scaffold mutual care, create infrastructures that absorb shocks, and open up new ways of organising collective life in uncertain times.

This event is organised by SUTD as part of Social Science and Humanities Ideas Festival 2026, a collaborative showcase by social science and humanities researchers across our local universities.

Useless Things: Beacons of Hope in a Ruinous Age

Keynote address by: Professor Stuart Walker, Manchester School of Art (MMU)

Speakers: Associate Professor Lyle Fearnley, Associate Professor Timothy Matthew Collins, Professor Cheng Nien Yuan, Assistant Professor Setsuko Yokoyama