Alice Chakrapeesirisuk

Alice is interested in the space between thinking and doing: how design, research, and speculative imagination can help us build different ways of addressing global challenges. Sitting at the intersection of design, ecology, and political theory, she is drawn to questions that span scales and disciplines, from designing for multispecies and nonhuman actors to reimagining systems, physical structures, social contracts and human relationships of care.

Alice’s interests are, by her own admission, somewhat difficult to contain in a profile description. She is fascinated by ecology, anthropology and behavioral science, but also design research, sociology, global politics, and critical theory. Growing up in Bangkok and later studying in the US, Alice has developed a particular interest in how ideas become embedded in the environments around us. At Princeton University, she studied architecture while minoring in environmental studies and cognitive science. There, her favorite projects explored the possibilities of using form and design to increase biodiversity in national parks, as well as mapping patterns across social and ecological systems.

Much of Alice’s previous internship experiences have been with nonprofits and development organizations in Thailand engaged in fieldwork. One recurring challenge has been trying to bridge the systemic, theoretical macro-scale perspectives she encountered in school with the pragmatic, day-to-day work of implementation. Her experiences have also made her increasingly interested in how design can serve as a lens for navigating that gap: not just as a product or archetype, but one which engages with and intervenes upon the systems surrounding it.

And while Alice is endlessly curious about why the world is the way it is—and why we do the things we do—she also loves the simple pleasure of putting on her headphones, turning up the music, and designing. Having recently moved to Helsinki, she can usually be found wandering through a design or natural history museum, staring outside windows and photographing the Nordic light, sketching in a café, or hitting the trails of the forest behind her host family’s home.