Nadine Botha
Nadine Botha is head of the Social Design Master’s programme at Design Academy Eindhoven. The programme focuses on new social roles for designers attuned to contemporary ecological and social challenges.
Botha is a research designer, editor, writer, and curator. Through a widely varied practice, she explores how unseen social, political, legal, economic and cultural systems design our objects, bodies, homes, cities, technologies, experiences and knowledges.
Examples include The Orders of the Undead – an exploration of disease, coloniality and mortality through the mythology of the zombie – and Sugar: A Cosmology of Whiteness, looking at the impact of mass production of sugar on society since the 15th century.
She was previously an editor-at-large for DAMN Magazine, and regularly contributes to a wide range of publications, including Design Observer, the Financial Times and Metropolis. In 2018, she was associate curator of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennale – School of Schools, and is co-curator of the DAE Graduation Show 2023.
Botha has a long-standing relationship with DAE, having both studied and taught at the school since 2015. In 2017, she received the Gijs Bakker Award for her project The Politics of Shit, after graduating from the Design Curating and Writing Masters programme.
Prior to relocating to the Netherlands, Botha was an arts and design journalist in South Africa.
