Moniek Driesse

Moniek Driesse is a design researcher, who was born in a tiny village in the Netherlands, but has been wandering through the megalopolis Mexico City for quite some years, before moving to Sweden. Trained as a designer (Design Academy Eindhoven, ba 2007) and architect (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, ma 2013), she is currently working on a PhD project at the Department of Conservation of the University of Gothenburg (2017-). This research is carried out within the framework of the CHEurope Research School, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Program focused on Critical Heritage Studies and the Future of Europe and embedded in the Curating the City work cluster.

Besides academia, Moniek established The Imaginary Agency as a platform to explore the subjective nature of human experience in order to understand it in its context and to promote socio-cultural change through the agency of imaginaries. In situated flux, she has collaborated with fellow professionals, foundations, cultural institutions, universities, and, most of all, inhabitants, working on diverse projects focused on public space in vulnerable urban areas (mostly in the Netherlands and Latin America) and the development of tools for dialogue and knowledge exchange. Memory studies scholar Sjamme van de Voort has recently become a partner in the Agency. Moniek and Sjamme will continue to explore the relation between cultural memory, human rights and environmental justice, through the analysis and interweaving of various modes of knowledge production and diverse creative practices.