Mina Zarfsaz is an Assistant Professor of Design at Rowan University, where she coordinates the Design program and directs the Institute for Innovative Media, Materials & Design (IMMaD). A transdisciplinary artist, designer, and scholar, she explores the intersection of technology and the humanities through participatory, research-based practices. Her work centers the interconnectedness of everything, drawing on Social Design and Behavioral Ecology as critical tools for social change.
Rooted in glitch feminism and systems thinking, Zarfsaz employs disruption as a method for creative inquiry. Her projects span experimental media, immersive installations, and public art interventions, often engaging underrepresented communities through collaborative, multisensory storytelling. She brings over 15 years of professional experience and more than a decade of teaching in higher education into her studio and classroom, where she emphasizes experiential pedagogy, inclusion, and interdisciplinary learning.
Her work has been featured in venues including Yale University (New Haven), Magnan Metz Gallery (NYC), Azad Gallery (Tehran), Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, Icebox Project Space, Vox Populi Gallery, Esther Klein Gallery (Philadelphia), and the Noyes Museum of Art (Atlantic City), with a forthcoming collaborative exhibition at the Yale Club in New York. She has held residencies at the University City Science Center, Vermont Studio Center, and Asian Arts Initiative. Her creative work, writing and visual essays appear in Adjacent (NYU ITP Journal), Title Magazine, Philadelphia Inquirer, the ArtBlog, Grizzly Grizzly, and NY Arts Magazine.
In 2024, Zarfsaz received Rowan University’s President’s Award for Excellence in Innovative Instructional Delivery and presented her recent research at the Spatial Humanities Conference in Bamberg, Germany. She was also nominated for the Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship in both 2021 and 2023.
Outside of work, she thrives in nature and is endlessly curious about outer space.
Research Interests:
Integrated Design, Innovation Design, Speculative Design, Social Design, Empathic Design, Ethical Design, Exploratory Perception/Action in Perception, Interactivity and Play, Worldmaking/XRealities, Sideways Immersion/Augmentation, Narrative in Place/Space, Poetics of Space, Placemaking, Designing for/with Environments, Behavioral Ecology, Sociology of Sciences, Language and Play, Data Interpretation, System Thinking, Creative/Artful Inquiry, Emergent Futures, Post-Intelligence
Integrated Design, Innovation Design, Speculative Design, Social Design, Empathic Design, Ethical Design, Exploratory Perception/Action in Perception, Interactivity and Play, Worldmaking/XRealities, Sideways Immersion/Augmentation, Narrative in Place/Space, Poetics of Space, Placemaking, Designing for/with Environments, Behavioral Ecology, Sociology of Sciences, Language and Play, Data Interpretation, System Thinking, Creative/Artful Inquiry, Emergent Futures, Post-Intelligence
" My work exists at the intersection of language, technology, and embodiment, where meaning is never fixed but constantly in a state of becoming. Drawing from glitch feminism, systems thinking, and post-structuralist philosophy, I use language not only as material but as a conceptual framework—both subject and medium. Disintegration, residue, dialogue, grafting, rhizomes, and glitches recur in my work not merely as metaphors but as mechanisms of inquiry—modes through which I explore entangled states of perception, knowledge, and lived experience.
Whether I am interpreting scientific processes, constructing participatory installations, or building speculative ecosystems, I treat language as an active agent—one that mediates relationships between humans, more-than-humans, and environments. My practice is deeply relational, privileging porous boundaries and multiplicity over resolution or fixity. Bernard Tschumi’s approach to notation and spatial disruption resonates with my own impulse to destabilize meaning and expose hidden structures—of power, of space, of knowledge.
This worldview guides not only my creative work but my pedagogy, institutional contributions, and scholarly practice. Through the Institute for Innovative Media, Materials & Design (IMMaD), I weave together research, teaching, and public engagement to imagine new languages for collective becoming." - MZ