Biografie
Lynn Harles is a Senior Design Researcher at the Competence Center for Transformation Design at the and a lecturer in Object Design at HSLU. Her research is situated at the intersection of design, science and technology studies, and the history of science, and examines the epistemology of design research: the conditions under which design produces knowledge, and the academic standards, formats, and institutions that determine what is recognised as a research outcome.
Her doctoral project, Design. Research. Laboratories. Mapping the Epistemic Landscapes of Design: Critical Historiography, Knowledge Cultures, Institutional Innovation and the Geopolitical, develops a critical historiography of the Scientific Revolution from the perspective of design, reading the history of science as a history of making through knowing and examining how modern science produced an anthropocentric understanding of nature and knowledge that remains operative in research today. The study reconstructs design research laboratories as epistemic formations across four overlapping generations from the 1920s to the present and identifies a morphology of recurring patterns, examined through four contemporary case studies: BurgLabs Halle, the BioDesign Lab at HfG Karlsruhe, SBYD.SPACE at Folkwang UdK Essen, and BIOLAB at Kunsthochschule Kassel. It argues that such laboratories are not derivative of the scientific laboratory but continuations of the workshop, and conceptualises them as epistemic ecotones — zones of overlapping knowledge cultures — in which design schools claim a form of epistemic sovereignty and operate as actors in transformative research at a micro-geopolitical scale.
Her current research develops the field of Planetary Intelligences within the CCTD, positioned between critical AI studies and more-than-human research, and examines speculative design as an instrument of knowledge production rather than solely a mode of communication. Related work addresses critical archiving and the transformative potential of natural history and scientific collections, as well as the geopolitics of design research.
Teaching is a research site in her work rather than a parallel obligation: she designs experimental course formats, among them Unlearning the Bachelor Thesis at BA Objekt Design, and examines them through accompanying research, so that pedagogical arrangements become evidence about the epistemic conditions of design education.
Lynn Harles is a board member of the German Society for Design Theory and Research (DGTF), where she co-organises the Design:Publiziert initiative on publication cultures in design. She previously held positions at the Center for Responsible Research and Innovation, Fraunhofer IAO, Berlin (2018–2023), and at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (2023–2024). She has initiated publicly funded projects including the speculative exhibition Food Fictions (BMBF Wissenschaftsjahr 2020|21) and contributed to research projects including Transferwissenschaft (with TU Berlin), Design for Innovation Rwanda (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), Microsoft Earth Lab and the Userlab in the Netzwerk Naturwissen.
