Alicia Smedberg is a Doctor of Participatory Design, currently employed as a postdoctoral researcher within  the CAPE project. She splits her time between ITU and Malmö University. Her research departs form the tension that democracy as a practice is relational and requires a conscious distribution of agency towards marginalized voices, despite resting on a foundation of distributed agency which does not recognize hierarchies. This means that a vocalization of political relations, and a channelling of action is required in any democratic process. This is particularly relevant in a context of public sector work where the question of democracy and inclusion is imperative.

Alicia’s research interests around participatory design, Feminist Technoscience, and affect theory, were all present in her doctoral dissertation The Labour of Infrastructuring: An inquiry into participatory design in the public sector (2022) where she examined infrastructures as feral entities and suggested anecdotalization as a reciprocal and sensitized method of engaging them.