Sophie Vögele has a background in anthropology and Gender Studies (University of Basel, Heidelberg and Geneva) and was affiliated to the sociology department at York University Toronto for several years where she also taught. She is a member of the doctoral school in philosophy at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. Since 2014, she has held a position as a senior researcher in Art Education at the Department of Cultural Analysis, ZHdK. The opportunity to see our design in a different light was inspired by the conversation with Sophie Vögele in which she proposed to look at our project through a pedagogical lens. She referred to Kate Bornstein’s old book “My Gender Workbook” to illustrate her contention that no one is a teacher, but everyone is a learner when it comes to relevant topics. Therefore, it is important to develop learning materials and provide diverse resources so that everyone has the appropriate learning context. She suggested that we think about our project in terms of art making, trying to reach a broader group of people, giving people more control, and creating an environment where the public can freely use our designs, thus giving educational and pedagogical value to our project.
Through our conversation, Sophie was so gracious to introduce us to several researchers whose research areas are similar to ours, and also directly referred us to Maya Ober. In addition, she shared resources from the course she teaches on “Design Theory of Identity”. Studying these resources gave us a closer and clearer understanding of theories of intersectionality and identity.