Melisa is a Research Fellow of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, where she leads the Future Health and Wellbeing research program and co-leads the Sustainability research theme. She is a full-time member based at the Department of Design MADA. As a design researcher, her works sits at the intersection of Design Anthropology, Participatory Design and Everyday Design. Melisa’s latest projects explore healthcare and wellbeing design ethnography with ageing people in the contexts of the home, the hospital and residential aged care. Where she learns about the ways in which built design environments and technologies of care are used and adapted by people in their everyday routines. She is particularly interested in emergent practices of design for revaluing, including: the ongoing transformation by design-in-use of spaces and devices, collaborative repair, and creative crafts of reuse. Melisa’s interdisciplinary work is featured in the latest ethnographic film Smart Homes for Seniors. She is a co-author of the recent book Design Ethnography: Research, Responsibilities and Futures (Routledge, 2022), and currently working on her book Designing Homeliness: Everyday Practices of Care (Routledge).

Melisa has a PhD from the School of Design at RMIT, a Masters of Design (by research) from Monash University, and she was trained as an Industrial Designer at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) in Medellin, Colombia. She has done design teaching at these three Universities and Design Schools.

Diseñadora e investigadora colombiana viviendo en Australia. Interesada en practicas de diseño cotidiano para la revaluación y el bienestar. Trabajando actualmente con temas de salud, tecnología y revaluación.