Join us for our July research seminar

At this online research seminar we will hear from Dr Adrienne Byrt and Dr Paige Macintosh

Friday 25 July

12:00pm AEST

Presentations

Applying feminist design sociology to co-create better support for mothers of premature infants
In this seminar, Dr Byrt discuss the implications for participatory design projects when co-designers inadvertently reproduce oppressive patriarchal demands as part of their recommendations for improved experiences of postpartum care and hospitalisation of sick and premature infants. Drawing on findings from a co-design workshop with mothers who had experienced a premature birth, she applied a feminist design sociology framework to analyse how the ideology of intensive mothering shaped the co-designers' practice recommendations. Turning to matricentric feminism to unpack the patriarchal demands placed on the co-designers within institutional, interactional, and individual domains, the analysis highlighted the benefits of sociological intervention through design projects to illuminate otherwise obfuscated ideological demands.

Rūrangi's Fourth Cinema Heritage: Trans Indigenous Storytelling in Aotearoa New Zealand

Dr Macintosh's research project explores how local trans creatives rely on Indigenous traditions, particularly Barry Barclay’s Fourth Cinema, to productively engage with trans subjectivities. An Indigenous filmmaker in his own right, Barclay’s scholarship advocates for cinema that privileges both the Indigenous gaze and Indigenous audiences. His commitment to foregrounding Indigenous subjectivities echoes trans scholarship’s shifting interest from representation to embodiment, work championed by Laura Horak, Cáel Keegan, Eliza Steinbock, and Susan Stryker. Using the critically acclaimed web-series Rūrangi as a central case study, Macinshosh's research aims to survey Aotearoa’s emerging trans cinema canon to highlight how Indigenous storytelling practices influence local trans filmmaking.

Speakers:

Dr Adrienne Byrt is a design sociologist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Swinburne University of Technology. Her research centres the voices of marginalised service recipients across health, public services, and social policy. Adrienne has worked across diverse projects in family violence, financial abuse, the socio-legal impacts of donor-linking, and traumatic birth experiences. Dr Byrt seeks to transform policy and service delivery through sociological analysis, systems mapping, and creative interdisciplinary approaches using methods from co-design and feminist sociology.

Dr Paige Macintosh is an Aotearoa-based trans media scholar whose research interests include contemporary media industries, trans embodiment in genre filmmaking, and Aotearoa New Zealand cinema. Their first book, titled Debating Authenticity: Authorship, Aesthetics, and Embodiment in Trans Media, is due for publication in July 2025.