Michelle Christensen is a sociologist and designer, exploring the spaces in between these realms. Her research investigates interdisciplinary relationships between gender, politics, the social and the designed world.
Michelle studied international development at Roskilde University in Denmark (B.A.), gender studies at the University of Amsterdam (M.Sc.), conflict studies and human rights at Utrecht University in the Netherlands (M.A.), as well as integrated design at the Köln International School of Design in Cologne, Germany (M.A.).
She has worked at the Crisis Department of Amnesty International USA and at Amnesty Denmark was a Humanity in Action Fellow, and a Congressional Fellow in the United States Congress in Washington DC.
She has taught conflict analysis, gender studies, design and research methods at universities in the Netherlands and Germany. Currently, she is writing her PhD in design research at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Together with Florian Conradi, she is furthermore heading the area of Interdisciplinarity and Open Labs at the Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF), an inter-university nucleus for research on the digitalization of society. Since 2015, she is a member of the Board of International Research in Design (BIRD) at Birkhäuser, and since 2014, she is a board member of the German Society for Design Theory and Research (DGTF).