Mariana Zafeirakopoulos
Mariana Zafeirakopoulos is a Social Design Lecturer at the University of Sydney. Mariana is a transdisciplinary scholar-practitioner, who works with other researchers and practitioners, combining different disciplines - like Social Sciences: International Relations, and Public Policy, with Design - to create new knowledge for intervening in our ever-evolving and complex world.
Mariana’s research explores interconnections between global system issues such as national security, food security, human security and migration, and the environment; and explores uncommon combinations of disciplinary practices such as Design Thinking as an abductive and creative process as applied to analytic and reductive thinking modes.
Mariana has a Master’s in Social Science and Public Policy (War Studies) from King’s College London, and undergraduate degree in Law (UNSW); and Government and International Relations, and Asian Studies (USYD). She is currently completing her PhD in Design (UTS).
Her current work is:
🌱 Mariana is researching how Design practices can help innovate how advice and decisions are made in national security settings. The main focus of her research is knowledge production and how to humanize national security issues. One outcome from this research was the development of a 2023 White Paper on Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity as part of a tripartite partnership between the UK, USA, and Australia.
🌱 At TC23, Mariana was inspired by other Futures-oriented thinkers to think about what personal transformation she could make within herself as part of her life-long journey to transform the world around her.
Mariana’s Call to Action for the Transformations Community:
If like me, you are feeling distressed or helpless by the ongoing conflicts in places like Sudan, Ukraine/Russia, and Palestine/Israel and want to do something about it, join me for a new research project: I’m seeking collaborators to explore: How to (re)design, (re)build and repair entire cities and communities of people suffering from the traumatic experience of war (and everything it entails such as famine, loss and displacement), whilst also preserving culture, identity and history. I’m looking for anyone who can bring their own disciplinary research or practice experience to this: maybe it's an environmental project around repair and resilience, perhaps it's about well-being and mental health, or maybe you have experience in infrastructure and systems change. All disciplinary perspectives are welcome! By forging a small group of researchers, together we can co-create our research questions and aims. If you’re interested, you can contact me at: mariana.zafeirakopoulos@sydney.edu.au
