Karin Aue External PhD
aue@drift.eur.nl
Karin Aue (she/her) is an External PhD Researcher at DRIFT and a Senior Lecturer and Program Lead of the Master of Design in Integrated Design at the National University of Singapore’s Division of Industrial Design. Her work sits at the intersection of design education, sustainability transitions, and participatory practice. She explores how design education can move beyond training individual practitioners to become enabling infrastructure for collective, ecosystem-wide change.
Her PhD research at DRIFT investigates how and under what conditions design education can serve as convening infrastructure that builds necessary transition capacities across diverse stakeholder groups - students, communities, industry, and institutions etc. Embedded in Singapore's emerging sustainability context, the research uses the MDes in Integrated Design programme as a living site of experimentation, prototyping convening formats and transformative practices, analysing how transition capacities emerge and ripple beyond the classroom.
The work adds much-needed Asian perspectives to predominantly Euro-centric transition studies, and aims to produce actionable strategies for educators and practitioners seeking to bridge ambitious design research with grounded, context-sensitive practice.
Before moving into academia, Karin spent nearly two decades in design practice. She led a multidisciplinary team at Chemistry, an award-winning innovation consultancy with offices in Singapore and Amsterdam and worked with international organisations including IDEO (Singapore), Tama Art University (Japan), KesselsKramer (UK), and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (Netherlands).
Her practice is grounded in planet-centred design and participatory approaches, using design as a strategic lever to drive meaningful, lasting impact. She carries this commitment into both her teaching and her advisory work with corporations, startups, and community organisations navigating complex sustainability transitions.
Outside of work, she is an avid runner and happiest with a cup of coffee and a sketchbook in a quiet café.
