Paulina Yurman

Dr. Paulina Yurman is a Wellcome Research Fellow and Lecturer in Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She is currently leading the Wellcome-funded research project Maternal Machines: Design Speculations about Fantasies of Care (2024–2028), which explores AI and technology in maternal and infant care through speculative design and participatory workshops with diverse stakeholders.

• PhD, Goldsmiths, University of London (2019)
• MA, Royal College of Art (1996)
• DIC, Imperial College London (1996)

Her research centers on ambivalence in human-technology relationships, particularly in family and caregiving contexts. Using speculative design, drawing, and material prototyping, she investigates how technologies shape rituals, emotions, and identities in everyday life. Her work critically engages with feminist design, material culture, and psychoanalytic perspectives.

The recent publications and projects reflect a strong trajectory in speculative and critical design, especially in maternal health, bodily fluids, and AI. Themes include the defamiliarization of care technologies, entanglements between humans and machines, and non-numerical forms of bodily knowledge. Her visual and workshop-based methods emphasize collaboration and imagination in envisioning alternative technological futures.

Scientific awards include:

• Honorable Mention Award, ACM Creativity & Cognition Conference (2021)

She has advised and collaborated with researchers and practitioners across design, HCI, AI ethics, medical humanities, and maternal health. Her work has been supported by major grants, including the Wellcome Trust and EPSRC. She has led workshops and presented at institutions such as KTH, Imperial College, and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.

Dr. Yurman leads the Drawing Conversations initiative, a collaborative drawing practice that bridges disciplines through visual dialogue with scholars in mathematics, physics, and HCI. She also developed the Fluid Speculations method, using watercolour to explore the materiality and ambiguity of care technologies.