Audrey G. Bennett is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work centers on design studies at the intersection of theoretical research and the critical and creative practices of thinking, making, and writing. She holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University’s School of Art and a BA in Studio Art from Dartmouth College.

Bennett has authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications and contributed artwork to 18 juried exhibitions. Her recent monograph, Critical Mapping for Sustainable Food Design: Food Security, Equity, and Justice (Taylor and Francis/Routledge 2023), explores how "interactive aesthetics" applied to the design of a "wicked solution" to food insecurity can mediate knowledge exchange between socio-economically diverse stakeholders to yield sustainability, equity, and justice.   

Bennett's earlier work, Engendering Interaction with Images (Intellect/Chicago University Press, 2012), explores the design of multimodal images whose visual and verbal language facilitate or evoke multisensory interaction with lay people to enable cross-cultural resonance and yield cognitive and behavioral changes. Her groundbreaking edited collection, Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), was among the first publications in the early twenty-first century to advocate for theoretical research in graphic design.

Bennett is the co-creator and co-principal investigator of the award-winning Culturally Situated Design Tools—Cornrow Curves and Quilting. These digital interfaces facilitate underrepresented youth interacting with the heritage algorithms embedded in cornrow braiding and quilting to glean computational thinking knowledge.

Bennett is a recipient of the AIGA Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary medal (2022), one of the highest honors in graphic design; an inaugural University Diversity and Social Transformation Professorship (2019, University of Michigan); an Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Scholar distinction (2015, University of Pretoria, South Africa); and a College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship (1996). Her courses include Typography, Methods of Inquiry, Publication Design, and Research Methods.

Contact: agbennet at umich dot edu