sara hendren on design, technology, art, and more

Ideas at the heart of material culture.

Jun 04, 2021

Welcome to undefended / undefeated, a newsletter from Sara Hendren. I’m a humanist working in technology: a design researcher, artist, professor at Olin College of Engineering, fellow at New America, and author of What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World.

In mid-2021, I’m still enjoying the newsletter sphere—the smaller-scale communities it creates, the chance to follow along with some thinkers who keep me honest and make me sharper. I’ve moved here for Substack’s publishing and audio features and for the slower-think connections that a newsletter network makes possible.

For more than a decade, I’ve been thinking a lot about design and disability: accessible technology, flexible architecture, the design of services and experiences that welcome more human bodies. In this newsletter, I’ll take up some of the ideas in the long wake of my book and my lab work—ideas that dig deeper than matters of inclusion and stretch outside the bounds of what we can see in material culture. More on that in the works now! I’m also interested in a bunch of other new ideas and realms of research, and I’d love to hear from you here if you’re game.

An image of the cover of my book, with a yellow background and black and yellow lettering for the title and author's name. The type is bleeding off the surface of the book, making the "mismatching, misfitting" theme of the book come alive in the jacket design itself.