Biography

Dr. Frederick (Fred) van Amstel (he/him/his) is a tenured Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Design & Visual Communications (MXD) Master of Fine Arts at the University of Florida, USA, a program known for its emphasis in codesign — collaborative, community-oriented, communication design. Since 2024, he sits on the editorial board of the leading journal in this field, CoDesign.

Frederick's research and education address contradictions in design: why and how codesign projects face conflict, ethical dilemmas, trade-offs, and complexity. In recent years, the contradiction of oppression climbed to the top of his research agenda due to the ascension of far-right extremism, climate racism, and digital colonialism in the Americas. In response, Frederick intensified his research on designing technologies to support the liberation of the oppressed.

Designing alter/native design methods and tools (metadesigning) and studying them in practice (infradesigning) is at the heart of Dr. Van Amstel's praxis-oriented research. These methods and tools are mostly used in participatory, decolonizing, feminist, anti-racist, embodied, commoning, self-managed, existentialist, critical, and transdisciplinary design approaches. Many fields are interested in such progressive approaches to design. So far, he published, together with collaborators, over 70 peer-reviewed papers in several fields of inquiry, including Human-Computer Interaction, Service Design, Participatory Design, Design Research, Architectural Design, and Construction Management.

Before moving to Florida, Frederick held the position of Assistant Professor at UTFPR, the only technical university in Brazil. There, he co-founded the Design & Oppression network and its local hub, the Laboratory of Design against Oppression (LADO). He also played a pivotal role in establishing UTFPR's graduate program in Prospective Design, the first of its kind in Brazil. From that position, he guest-edited two special issues of the Diseña Journal on Design, Oppression, and Liberation, hosted the international course Designs of the Oppressed, and organized the Theater of the Techno-Oppressed outreach activity. Frederick and his peers in the Design & Oppression Network are consolidating a dialectical-existential perspective over design based on the works of Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, Álvaro Vieira Pinto, Oswald de Andrade, Rogério Duarte, and other Latin American authors. The identification of userism, the ideology that reduces humans to users (and only users), is a significant finding in this line of work.

Frederick Marinus Constant van Amstel defines himself as a "transdisciplinary adventurer" with a Bachelor's in Social Communication (Media Studies), a Master's in Technology (Science & Technology Studies), and a PhD in Industrial Design Engineering. While developing such backgrounds, Frederick transgressed disciplinary boundaries and engaged deeply with non-disciplinary knowledge, an experience that led him to remain critical of the way knowledge is produced and accumulated in academia.

More about his work at https://fredvanamstel.com/