Greetings! 👋🏼

Welcome to The Pessoptimist, an irregular newsletter featuring observations that teeter between hope and despair. I write about design, politics, culture, London life, and academic life. I like to think of this as a return to my good old blogging days (circa 2007-2011) before the internet went downhill.

I am a designer, educator and researcher interested in new narratives and practices in design that push the disciplinary boundaries and definitions of the subject. I am a Reader (Associate Professor) in Anti/Post/Decolonial Histories, Theories and Praxes at Decolonising the Arts Institute and in the Design School at Camberwell, Chelsea, and Wimbledon Colleges of Art (CCW) at University of the Arts London (UAL).

I am a founding member of the Decolonising Design platform, and founded Kalimat Magazine (2010-2016), an independent, non-profit publication about Arab thought and culture.

I am the author of two books: Designerly Ways of Knowing: A Working Inventory of Things a Designer Should Know (Onomatopee, 2022), and Design Otherwise: Transforming Design Education in the Arab Region (Bloomsbury, 2025).

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