Join the Department of Media Arts, Design & Technology and Design Studies for its annual lecture series. The full list of lectures can be found here: 2026-2027 Lecture Series.

Tania Allen, department head of media arts, design & technology and design studies, NC State University 

Tania Allen’s research and scholarship focuses on critical cartography and critical mapping as tools for design research. Building on theories drawing from anthropology, action research, placemaking, and participatory design her works seeks to “thicken” the way that data is visualized and the stories and experiences that are at the core of data collection, cleaning, manipulation and communication. At the core of her approach to critical cartography is the reciprocal activity of encoding and decoding, bridging the etic perspective of the researcher (i.e. designer) and the emic perspective of the subject of study (i.e. the user) by using data to uncover and communicate a truth (encoding), while simultaneously evaluating the meaning of this truth (decoding).

Tania is the co-director of the design research group co-lab, which focuses on critical mapping as a participatory design research tool. Currently, co-lab’s focus is on developing a methodology for critical mapping that simultaneously embraces cartography as a powerful analytic and synthetic research tool, while also challenging the assumptions that the mapping and visualization process embeds within it.