Lizette Reitsma
Senior lecturer

Presentation

Lizette Reitsma is a participatory designer-researcher who works with Indigenous and local communities on climate change, ecological knowledge and weather. Drawing on participatory design and research-through-design, she brings together different knowledge systems and worldviews through long-term partnerships in Lesotho, Eswatini and Malaysia. Together with Simon Niedenthal and within the O:dor research group, she is developing Futuring with the Nose (FUSE), which asks how smell can help us sense changing weather and places, and imagine what might come next.

She mainly teaches co-design and participatory design, and design research methods including design ethnography. She brings pluriversal, decolonial and feminist perspectives to design and encourages students to design with, rather than for, communities. Student projects have contributed to her research, and students travel between Malmö and Eswatini. She holds a PhD from Northumbria University and an MSc from Eindhoven University of Technology.

For recent research projects see Indigenous Climate Observatories and its continuation Circulating Ceremonies.