Description
At 28, I began teaching Information Design in the Master in Eco-Social Design at Bozen-Bolzano, Italy — my first academic role after years as a freelance designer. With no prior experience in teaching, I entered the classroom full of questions: How can data visualization support ecological and social change? How should we teach it meaningfully?
This talk is not just about what I taught, but what I learned. My students responded with powerful, experimental projects that used physical and emotional forms of data representation to explore urgent contemporary issues. Their work taught me that data can be more than information — it can be care, critique, and resistance.
What emerged was a pedagogy grounded in listening, vulnerability, and shared discovery. This presentation is a reflection on the learning that happens when we teach with openness — and on the transformative potential of design when guided by context, curiosity, and community.
