People
Prof. Dr. phil. Sophia Prinz
Design theory and history
Sophia Prinz is Professor of Design Theory and History at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). From 2018 to 2020, she was Visiting Professor of Design Theory and Gender Studies at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). She had previously been Lecturer in Cultural Sociology at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) (2010–2018) and at the University of Constance (2006–2010). In 2012, she completed her doctoral thesis on the “practice of vision” (published in 2014). She was coordinator of the long-term exhibition project Mobile Worlds (2015–2018), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). For that project, she was awarded the Brandenburg Postdoc Award. From 2018-2019 she was a Fellow in the Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices program of the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. She is a member of the DFG network "Cultures of Aesthetic Resistance," established in 2019. From October 2020 to July 2021, she was a Fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study (HIAS).
Parallel to her university activities, she was researcher at the Johann Jacobs Museum (2012–2021), where she was involved in several exhibition projects.
Her academic interests are practice theory and perception, design and society, exhibition theory and aesthetics, as well as global modernity and transculturality.
She is currently working on a book project about the “migration of form” (together with Roger M. Buergel) and a research project exploring the relationship between social practices and design in global modernity.