Faculty

Audrey Bennett is a graphic design scholar who studies cross-cultural and trans-disciplinary design that make use of images that permeate global culture and impact the way we think and behave. Her research contributes a hypothesis called interactive aesthetics that aims to democratize control of images in society. Interactive aesthetics explains the use of technology to place designers in virtual collaboration with lay users, where technology makes it easier for remote participants in various stages of the design process to work together. Bennett currently conducts fieldwork globally to investigate the use of interactive aesthetics to affect social change. Her interactive aesthetics research agenda includes two primary strands of inquiry. First, Bennett studies the use of IA in the prevention of new HIV infections in Kenya and Ghana (funded by the National Science Foundation). Second, she investigates the use of interactive aesthetics toward ethnically and intellectually diversifying STEM education, particularly computer science, with indigenous art curricula (funded by the National Science Foundation and Google).

Bennett is the co-editor of the Icograda Design Education Manifesto 2011 and participates on the editorial boards of the Journal of Communication Design, Text & Image, and the New Design Ideas Journal. She is a member of the board of directors of CAA: Advancing Art and Design.

MFA Yale University; BA Dartmouth College.