Tessa Laven

Biography

Tessa is a strategic/systems design practitioner and a PhD design researcher at London College of Communication. She is part of the Marie Skolodwska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network 'CoDesign4Transitions' which is exploring the intersection of democratic innovation, climate transitions, and design. She is part of an ongoing collaboration with Stockholm Environment Institute and the SÁPMIDEM research project exploring democratic participation of Indigenous Sámi groups in Scandinavia's 'green transition'.

Her research investigates 'relational infrastructures' and practices of 're-structuring relations' in an (un)just energy transition case in Norway involving Indigenous Sámi, Government, and Industry groups. She draws from transition studies, just transitions, and transformative power and design literature to analyse the ways in which group relationships were structured asymmetrically, and the practices through which they were re-structured. Learnings will inform power and relationally reflexive design practices in just transition contexts.

Tessa draws from a rich array of experience as a strategic and systemic design practitioner in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, where she has applied design methods to complex change projects spanning Government, NGOs, Industry bodies and utilities. Her work was focused at the intersection of justice, equity, sustainability and complexity, including projects focused on empowering Aboriginal and gender-diverse groups in Australia's energy transition, developing models and methods for Industry-community collaboration in renewable energy role-out, and developing roadmaps and interventions for systemically shift Australian industry and water utilities to circular economy models.

She holds a deep interest in decolonial practices, environmental sustainability, and social change. She identifies as pākehā (NZ European) and 'tangata tiriti' (person of the treaty), recognising her own history and position in settler-colonial New Zealand, and subsequent ongoing responsibilities as partners with tangata whenua (Māori).