QUEER[ING] OF THINGS (QoT)
Joyful++ Complexities

Guiding Principles

Queer is Identity: Queer is individuals and groups with lived experiences, impressions, and expertise. Queer is subject, participant, collaborator, survivor, inventor, and agent of change. Queer has histories, presence, and futures. Queer is self-aware and self-determined.

Queer is Creativity: Queer is flexible, adaptive, emergent, unfixed, plural, open, curious, unruly, playful, messy, different, and generative. Originating in challenges to assumed foundations of human behavior and relationships (cis-heteronormativity and binaries), Queer, at its core, rejects reductionist essentialism, linear thinking, fixed categories, status quo, and oppressive social norms—while embracing uncertainty, vulnerability, errors, glitches, outliers, deviations, and unknowns.

Queer(ing) is Intent: Queering questions, troubles, resists, subverts, deconstructs, (un)learns, imagines, liberates, and uplifts people and transformative ideas.

Queering is Practice: Queering happens through theory, philosophies, paradigms, strategies, frameworks, protocols, methods, processes, and craft. It is postnormal and brings Queer knowledge, artifacts, systems, experiences, and alternative realities to life.

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Research Talks/Engagements

Westbrook, J. (2024, November 25). Queering Design [Invited guest lecture]. Politics & Ethics of Design, The New School, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY.

Westbrook, J. (2024, September 12). Queering futures with data-driven speculation. Conference presentation at MethodsCon, Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research, University of Manchester, Manchester, U.K.

Westbrook, J. (2024, September 7). Queer Time Machines: A Case Study. Conference presentation at the International Creative Research Methods Conference, Manchester, U.K. Organized by H. Kara, S. Khoo, & D. Mannay.

Westbrook, J. (2024, June). Co-chair: Joyful Complexity: Methodological (Dis/Re)Orientations. In Design Research Society Conference (DRS 2024), MIT Stata Center, Boston, MA.

Westbrook, J. (2024, June). Co-chair: Joyful Complexity: People, Power, Positionalities. In Design Research Society Conference (DRS 2024), Harvard SEAS Science and Engineering Complex, Boston, MA.

Westbrook, J. (2024, June). Co-chair with Gem Barton and Coraline Ada Ehmke: Conversation Session, Queer(ing) Design Research. In Design Research Society Conference (DRS 2024), Northeastern University, hybrid, Boston, MA.

Westbrook, J. (2024, June 11). Queer Time Machines [Conference presentation and prototype exhibition]. Queer Transformations Conference, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.

Westbrook, J.(2023) Queering Futures with Data-Driven Speculation, in De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.), IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy.

Westbrook, J. P. (2023). Queering futures. In F. Rossi, S. Das, J. Davis, K. Firth-Butterfield, & A. John (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES 2023), Montréal, QC, Canada, August 8-10, 2023 (p. 941). ACM.

Westbrook, J. (2023, June). Queering Futures Framework > 1.0. Research talk at the Creativity Conference, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OH.

Westbrook, J. (2023, April). Positionality Play. Research talk at the NOT.GLI.TC/H Symposium, University of Chicago, Media Arts Data and Design (MADD) Center, Chicago, IL.

Westbrook, J. (2022, April). If null, then FUTURES. In A. Price (Chair), When something is nothing: Null results in informal learning research [Structured poster session]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting (#AERA2022), San Diego, CA.

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