Dr. Renata M. Leitão is a Brazilian/Canadian design researcher with eleven years of experience in collaborative projects with Indigenous and marginalized communities.

In this talk, Dr. Leitão conceptualizes Pluriversal Design as a form of design that engages with diverse worldviews and epistemologies to produce social change. Colonialism is not only about the dispossession of lands and exploitation of peoples; it is also about the destruction of knowledge systems—i.e., the Western epistemic canon became the only valid way to represent the world.

Therefore, designing for social justice asks scholars to engage with the knowledge systems of colonized and marginalized peoples. It is a very challenging task — other worldviews and epistemologies are difficult to understand because they engender unfamiliar thinking patterns and different assumptions.