My name is Zack Tucker.
I'm a design theorist, researcher, and educator.
Currently, I serve as an Assistant Professor of Communication Design at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA.
What I Do
I explore and interact with historic and entangled challenges associated with civic engagement in the United States. In particular, I have adopted a place-based creative and scholarly practice around Freedom Summer 1964 and its relevance to contemporary social justice and voter suppression issues. My work tends to be transdisciplinary, collaborative, participatory, and reflective. By conducting research through design, I put theory into practice engaging with various communities through creative activities like exhibitions of design work, curated experiences, and commissioned professional projects. My scholarly publications and presentations are a result of this reflective creative practice and contribute to building new knowledge in the discipline of design through critical interrogation of methodology. My goal as a teacher, public servant, and scholar is to model, engage, and advance cooperative, and reciprocal approaches through design as a means of democratic inquiry.
Current Projects
- Autoethnographic visual essay examining my own positionalities and subjectivities in relation to my work with Freedom Summer as part of the AIGA DEC Design Writing Fellowship.
- Book Chapter: Building Community Resilience with the Finding Freedom Summer Traveling Panel Exhibit in the forthcoming edited volume, Restorative Practices in Education Through Art, by L. Kay, D. Heise, B.H. Johns with collaborator Stephanie Danker.
- Finding Freedom Summer Traveling Panel Exhibit with collaborators Jacky Johnson, Stephanie Danker, Alia Levar Wegner, Kim Hoffman, Carla Myers, and Bob Wicks.
- Article: Reflective Practice through Cooperation: Using Twitter Bots to Teach Co-Design Methods with collaborators Constance Ordeman and Karen Mauk.
- Interview: Zack Tucker: On Community Engaged and Scoial Impact Design as part of the AIGA Design Educatiors Community Design Educator Profile Series.
- Presentation: Towards Ethical Reflective Practice and Radical Acceptance in Design Practice, Research, and Edcuation at the 2022 AIGA National Design Conference in Seattle, WA USA.
- Article: Using Twitter Bots to Critically Question the Belief Systems of College-Aged Republicans and Democrats published internationally in The Design Journal.
Selected Publications, Exhibitions, and Presentations
Let's Connect
Vitae