My reflection spans from my role within UAL and my teaching context as a curriculum developer for climate, racial and social justice. Much of my work involves teaching intersectionality frameworks to art and design students, often through practical examples that connect theory to real-world design interventions.
In this blog, I focus specifically on the intersection of disability and climate justice. I reflect on how I address this in the classroom and the ways I encourage students to connect these issues to their own design practices. Rather than viewing intersectionality as a combination of fixed identity categories, I frame it as an interaction between disability and structural climate injustices, resulting in specific forms of marginalisation.
This perspective is central to how I teach climate justice, particularly in disciplines like Graphic Design, Communication Design, Service Design, and Industrial Design. I use lived experiences of disabled people during climate crises to ground our discussions in real-world contexts. These stories serve as case studies on how design systems often fail by not accommodating the diverse needs of all users. For example, when individuals are left without accessible evacuation options, lose access to critical medical infrastructure, or are excluded from emergency communications, the issue is not hypothetical — it is a systemic design failure.
To bring these issues into focus, I draw on references such as podcasts, interviews, and testimonies that document the lived experiences of disabled people during climate crises. (References included below). These resources allow students to hear directly from individuals most affected by climate injustice, anchoring abstract theory in personal, lived experience.
Examples of contextualisation on intersectionality into the core of creative and systems-thinking design practices:
- In service and communication design, for example, I ask students to pay attention on the lived experiences of disable people during climate emergency and draw attention to the failures of mainstream emergency communications and infrastructure during climate disasters (Just Security Podcast, 2025) It allows me to ask students: Who are we designing for? Who gets left out of our user personas, our outreach strategies, our contingency systems? The real-world example of a two-week power outage disproportionately affecting disabled and elderly residents becomes a rich case study for rethinking inclusive emergency planning, accessible information systems, and mutual aid networks as critical design interventions.
- In industrial and product design, I ask students to think of the tools, technologies, and physical systems that could mitigate — or compound — vulnerability in climate crises. I often use the example of Ghenis’ comments (Disability Rap, 2022), on the need for accessible infrastructure and inclusive planning provide a framework to challenge students to design beyond normative assumptions of ability, mobility, and self-sufficiency. For instance, we can critically explore how medical devices dependent on electricity, or inaccessible transport systems, become life-threatening in the face of climate disruption. This creates space for design briefs that centre disabled people as primary stakeholders, not as an afterthought.
- In communication design, I raise questions around accessible messaging during crises: Who receives warnings, and how? What languages, technologies, and formats are considered “standard” or “efficient,” and who is excluded by those norms? (Black Earth Podcast, 2023)
Through this teaching approach, I challenge students to design systems of care and preparedness that include disabled individuals as central participants, not as afterthoughts. I demonstrate that climate justice cannot be separated from disability justice and that design carries responsibility for addressing the unequal distribution of both risk and resilience. Whether through speculative projects, workshops, or mapping exercises, I support students in interrogating design’s complicity in exclusion and its potential to foster solidarity and structural change. This allows me to scaffold a pedagogy rooted in care and accountability—one that identifies intersecting oppressions and equips students to design differently. (DICARP, n.d.)
Additionally, I encourage students to move beyond additive identity models (e.g., disabled + poor or racialised) and consider how climate injustice and disablement co-produce one another. Crises often generate new forms of disablement, while disabling environments are built into emergency planning systems. This shift is critical for design students, who are often taught to “solve problems” without questioning who defines the problem—or who is most impacted by its framing. (SoCal 350, 2021)
Ultimately, this approach grounds intersectionality in lived experience and design systems. It enables students to move from abstract commitments to justice toward tangible, reflective, and responsible practices. These case studies, shared through real stories, interviews, and audio testimonies, aren’t just about climate impact—they are catalysts for critical imagination and a call to reorient design toward care, access, and equity. (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018)
References
Climate Curious (2024) How the LA fires brought disability justice to light. Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst. [Podcast] Climate Curious. Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-the-la-fires-brought-disability-justice-to-light/id1534594079?i=1000700106846 [Accessed 9 May 2025].
Black Earth Podcast (2023) Disability justice and Earth care with Valerie Novack. Hosted by Marion Atieno Osieyo. [Podcast] Black Earth. Available at: https://www.blackearthpodcast.com/episodes/disability-justice-and-earth-care-with-valerie-novack [Accessed 9 May 2025].
Just Security (2023) The Just Security Podcast: Climate Change and Disability Rights. Featuring Professor Michael Ashley Stein. [Podcast] Just Security. Available at: https://www.justsecurity.org/87147/the-just-security-podcast-climate-change-and-disability-rights/ [Accessed 9 May 2025].
SoCal 350 (2021) The Intersection of Disability, Justice, & Climate – Ep. 113. [Podcast] SoCal 350 Climate Action. Available at: https://soundcloud.com/socal350/the-intersection-of-disability-justice-climate [Accessed 9 May 2025].
Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Programme (DICARP) (n.d.) Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Programme. [Online] Available at: https://www.disabilityinclusiveclimate.org/ [Accessed 9 May 2025].
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L.L. (2018) Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press.
4 replies on “Disability and Climate Justice: Teaching Intersectionality in Design_Blog post #1”
Hi Monika – below are my thoughts.
“Rather than viewing intersectionality as a combination of fixed identity categories, I frame it as an interaction between disability and structural climate injustices, resulting in specific forms of marginalisation.” — This is super interesting and I’d love for it to be unpacked more. Is there scope for some sort of visual representation. I’m not familiar with much climate justice literature, so I’d be curious to see the overlaps between its various aspects and the forms of marginalisations that occur from this.
Although, saying this, I wonder if doing so might be reductionist and and promote more of an additive model – whereas the reality is there is a more dynamic blend between contexts?
The list of references is broad in the different uses of media, and I might steal some of these for my own teaching. I was curious to hear more about yourself, and what made you choose these particular bits of literature. Why not other literature? What is it about your background and teaching philosophy that selected this literature to give to students?
“This shift is critical for design students, who are often taught to “solve problems” without questioning who defines the problem—or who is most impacted by its framing. (SoCal 350, 2021) — This resonates with my own teaching in Human-Computer Interaction. I especially find that my Computer Science students are very solutionist, perhaps given their training as engineers, which tend to miss some of these broader points and considerations. In my classes, the design brief is also often set by me: I define the problem. I wonder if there are any methods that you use that could help me to let students critique myself, and my own background, when reflecting on the design prompts they’ve been given.
All the best,
Corey
Thanks Corey for your comment.
You raise an important point about the risk of visualising intersectionality as additive. In the future I would be interested in trying mapping exercises where students co-create diagrams that trace systems and social dynamics, rather than fixed categories. These would be intentionally messy and overlapping, encouraging a process of exploring complex, entangled structures rather than static representations.
Your curiosity about the literature I reference is such a thoughtful provocation — and one I’m now realising I should probably include more explicitly! The choices are shaped by my own positionality: I come from a background in critical pedagogy and design justice, and I’m especially drawn to materials that foreground lived experience and amplify marginalised voices in formats such as podcasts, testimonies, community-led reports. I often find these more immediate and accessible for students, especially when we’re working to break down the authority of academic texts and open up space for plural forms of knowledge.
Your reflection on the “problem-solving” mindset in HCI really resonated. I’ve seen that same tendency among design students — the drive to fix, rather than sit with discomfort or interrogate the framing of the problem itself. One method I’ve used is asking students to write short positionality statements at the outset of a project — not just about who they are, but about what assumptions they bring into the design space. I’ve also invited them to rewrite briefs from the perspective of those most impacted, or to imagine what a community-led prompt might look like. If you’re open to it, inviting students to reflect on your own positionality — or even co-design parts of the brief — could be a powerful way to make that dynamic visible and participatory.
Thanks again, Corey — I really appreciated this thoughtful exchange, and I’m definitely taking your insights with me into my own reflections on teaching practice.
Best, Monika
Thank you so much Monika for this powerful reflection!
I was really struck by how you frame intersectionality not as additive but as relational, how climate injustice creates disablement, not just how disabled people are included or excluded. This is really enlighten thought, that shifted something in how I think about my own practice.
I appreciate you mentioned referencing on podcasts, interviews, and testimonies that document the lived experiences of disabled people during climate crises. I wonder how you support students in engaging with the emotional and ethical weight of these materials, especially when they speak to real trauma. Do you weave in moments of collective care or reflection?
Your pedagogy has genuinely inspired me, thank you for the clarity, courage and care you bring to your pedagogy. 🙂
Thanks for you comments Rebekah ❤️
Your question about how I support students in engaging with the emotional and ethical weight of these stories is such an important one — thank you for raising it so thoughtfully.
I approach these materials with a strong emphasis on intentional scaffolding. Before introducing any testimony that touches on trauma, systemic violence, or lived experiences of marginalisation, we establish collective agreements around care, respect, and consent. This includes setting the tone for how we listen, reflect, and respond — not just intellectually, but emotionally and ethically. I often begin these sessions with a grounding exercise, which might involve a brief moment of silence, a breathing practice, or a shared reflective prompt, to help students arrive fully and with care.
When we engage with these powerful, often difficult narratives, I try to ensure that the classroom remains a space where discomfort is allowed and can be metabolised. I make time for collective pauses, check-ins, and guided reflection, and I always pair stories of trauma with questions of possibility: What could have been different? What systems failed, and how might we redesign them? How can we centre disabled voices not just in critique, but in reimagining futures of care, access, and resilience?
These moments become more than learning objectives — they become shared ethical encounters. They invite students to sit with the complexity of injustice while also recognising their agency as designers, thinkers, and future practitioners. In that way, the classroom becomes both a site of reckoning and of repair, and I see these practices of collective reflection and critical imagination as vital to fostering a pedagogy rooted not only in justice, but in mutual accountability and hope.
Thank you again, Rebekah, for your generous words.