Biography

Karl Aspelund is Associate Director of the Honors Program at the University of Rhode Island and Associate Professor of Design and Design Theory in the TMD Dept. at URI’s College of Business. He is also Visiting Associate Professor in Ethnology and Museum Studies at the University of Iceland. After a 20-year career in design for theater, film, and public art, Karl completed a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Material Culture at Boston University in 2011 where he was awarded the Edmonds Prize for Best Dissertation. His research involves textiles, material culture and personal and national identity creation. On the 100-Year-Starship research team, he has investigated the needs and constraints of textiles for long-duration spaceflight, leading to current focus on the human element involved and on circular economies of textiles on Earth. Karl has authored three textbooks on design and design theory and has organized and facilitated a number of events attended by academic, industry, government, and military organizations where design thinking has produced solution sets for complex local and global problems. A volume of essays on Icelandic culture-creation he co-authored and edited with Dr. Terry Gunnell, was nominated for the 2017 Icelandic Literary Prize for Academic Work.