Being a Viet immigrant student, Hien Phan wanted to dedicate her project-in-lieu-of-a-thesis to the Asian and Pacific Islander students of the University of Florida. Building on the codesign practice of the Master of Fine Arts in Design and Visual Communications (MXD) program, she wanted to codesign a more welcoming academic environment for future students like her. However, in 2024, the State of Florida dismantled all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, including the student center she wanted to work with, as part of an anti-woke far-right politics campaign. Directly impacted by the conservative backlash, Hien turned her attention to the contradiction of institutional diversity.
After engaging in dialogue with faculty from many university departments about this topic, Hien discovered that, in the United States of America, institutional diversity has grown to cover up institutional racism, which, after the DEI ban, became more visible. She started to wonder about her role in that university as a diversity token, of her nation’s historical ties to the US, and the geopolitics of design. She realized that the contradiction of institutional diversity marked her personal story, life prospects, and design style.
From that moment on, she decided to express her immigrant experience in the project while collecting similar experiences. She adopted autoethnography as the primary research method. That meant studying the relationship between culture and biography not just for herself but for people like her.
The project includes several co-designed visual conversations on institutional diversity, including the search for alter/native ways of experiencing diversity. Rather than reinforcing multiculturalism, alter/native diversity calls for solidarity among many marginalized design bodies. It is a vision of the future of institutional diversity that acknowledges and makes visible rather than covers up racism and other forms of oppression.
Download the thesis from the university repository
References
Phan, H. L. D., & van Amstel, F. M. C. (2025). The Contradiction of Institutional Diversity in the Design Student Body. Diseña, (27), Article.6. https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.27.Article.6
