Lynn Harles is a Design Researcher, Curator, and Writer working at the intersection of design, architecture and science.

She is currently working at the research cluster “Transformation design” at Hochschule Lucerne (Switzerland) and a Lecturer at University of the Arts in Linz (Austria). Furthermore, she is the founder of the “Nature Rights Policy Design Labs” that will launch in March 2026 and is sponsored by World Design Capital Frankfurt | RheinMain “Design for Democracy”.

In her work, she explores the past and future of design as a discipline that reshapes how we create knowledge and bring it into responsible action—from eco-social transitions to technological sovereignty. She examines design’s underestimated role during the “scientific revolution” and its contribution to central scientific discoveries across past centuries. Simultaneously, she critically investigates how global academic practices have perpetuated a western- and human-centred understanding of nature and science—an approach now reaching its limits against the backdrop of mounting ecological, societal, and epistemological crises. She makes this explicity, by investigating the roles of Natural History Museums as central hubs for eco-social transition from a design perspective.

Against this background, she highlights design’s crucial potential to transform academic structures from isolated disciplines into complex ecologies of knowledge that embrace multiple intelligences: human and non-human, indigenous and practice-based ways of knowing.

She synthesizes these findings in her PhD dissertation at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, “Design. Research. Labs: The Ecologies of Knowledge of Design as Research Practice, Culture and Institutional Innovation,” demonstrating how contemporary Design Research Labs at design and art universities function as sites of epistemic sovereignty. The dissertation will be published in 2026.

Since her award-winning Master project, “Design in the Anthropocene,” in 2016, she has been passionate about collaborating with scientists, environmentalists, and local communities. Her work explores the manifold potentials of design for interdisciplinary and participatory knowledge production, addressing pressing socio-ecological issues such as biodiversity loss and microplastic pollution.

Lynn sees design research as a means to push academic boundaries and rethink our human-centered understandings of nature, science, and innovation. She has participated in several scientific expeditions, from crossing the North Atlantic Gyre, visiting fishing villages in Ecuador, and engaging in manatee conservation in Florida, to studying remote and nature-related ways of being at the Phugtal Monastery in the Himalayas. These experiences help her understand the impact of the Anthropocene era and its local and cultural meanings.

Her research methodologies combine approaches from Visual Anthropology, Multispecies Studies, scientific field trips with approaches from Design Research and Practice, including Speculative and Critical Design, Multispecies Design, Material Design, and Architecture.

Lynn gained professional experience as an interdisciplinary design researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute (CeRRI) and the Natural History Museum in Berlin. She has initiated several publicly funded projects, such as the speculative exhibition Food Fictions (funded by BMBF Wissenschaftsjahr 2020|21), and collaborated on interdisciplinary research projects like Transferwissenschaft, Design for Innovation Rwanda (commissioned by Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), Microsoft Earth Lab, and Userlab in the Netzwerk Naturwissen (MfN).

Thus, she investigates the potential roles of Natural History Museums as central hubs for eco-social transition from a design perspective on the one hand.

Additionally, Lynn works as a freelance curator and co-curated the Multispecies Symposium with Dr. Claudia Banz at Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin. She is also a Jury Member of the German Design Graduates Award, a Board Member of the German Design Research Society (DGTF).