Rachel Charlotte Smith is Associate Professor of Human-Centred Design at the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies at Aarhus University, where she leads the research centre for Digital and Green Transformation in Cities and Communities (DIGTCOM). Her research focuses on everyday computational practices, sustainable social change and alternative futures across global south and north contexts. She works across transdisciplinary fields of Design Anthropology, Participatory Design and Human-Computer Interaction to contribute to scholarship that explores alternatives for sustainable, equitable and pluriversal futures. Smith is Associate Fellow at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) and former HIAS Joachim Herz Fellow at Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study (HIAS) 2025-2026.
At STIAS Smith will work with the project Pluriversal AI Futures: Computational Empowerment for Sustainable Alternatives. Building on her current research, the project explores how we can imagine and design computational practices for sustainable pluriversal AI futures that enable diversity of voices, knowledges and epistemologies, based on research across Namibia, South Africa and Denmark.