Call for Contributions
RTD Roams 2027: Situated Knowledge, Materiality and Relationality
RTD is back with Roams
Research through Design (RTD) began in 2013 as an alternative space for sharing, disseminating and championing the role and agency of practice-based design research. From the first edition at the Baltic in Gateshead in England, RTD placed the practice at the centre of proceedings, with a curated exhibition of tangible design artefacts, accompanied by roundtable conversations in Rooms of Interest. The format is inspired by the art and design school ‘crit’, supporting constructive critique and egalitarianism. It is aimed at interrogating research and recognising diverse forms of visual and material literacy whilst challenging the dominance of text-based modes. Diversity, interdisciplinarity and international engagement was encouraged. Work-in-progress was welcomed as legitimate forms of knowledge to document and share, as well as polished design outcomes.
The conference grew into a biennial series, with Cambridge, England, in 2015, Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2017, Delft, The Netherlands, in 2019. Each edition has embraced the core ethos whilst experimenting with new ways to bring practitioners, researchers and design materials together: through workshopping, performances and provocations. Each edition has produced learning within the RTD community, including how features of the format are valued. Place matters for bringing people together around their work in relatively intimate settings. The dialogical dissemination format reflects how knowledge is made through encounters between researchers, materials, artefacts, and communities, challenging the traditional conference presentations to audiences in darkened auditoriums.
RTD paused after 2019 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its impacts. After a hiatus, the conference series returns, and in experimental spirit explores a new, transnational format.
For 2027, RTD is returning as RTD Roams.
A Different Kind of Gathering
RTD Roams is a multi-sited series of RTD conferences taking place in different locations around the world, each happening consecutively. This new initiative aims to offer a more situated and local setting for design researchers to gather, share, critique and learn in ways that are relevant for the regional RTD practitioner communities.
This distributed format is not simply a logistical arrangement; it is a proposition. RTD has always held that knowledge is made, not merely reported, and that encounters between practitioner-researchers, materials, artefacts, and communities are where understanding becomes realisable.
RTD Roams extends this conviction into the conference format itself: where you gather matters; making is always situated; and a conversation happening simultaneously across three cities and multiple time zones is fundamentally different from one happening in a single place.
We invite researchers, practitioners, and makers to join one of three Roams, each with its own character, and its own local hosts, so as to contribute to a broader, unfolding conversation and exchange that connects across sites and accumulates over the duration of the events.
Roaming
To roam is to move without a fixed destination, purposefully, attentively, open to what is encountered along the way. It is a mode of inquiry as much as a mode of travel.
For RTD 2027, Roams names both the format and the research stance we are inviting. It asks: what does it mean to make knowledge in a specific place, with specific people, at a specific moment, and how does that situated knowledge travel, transform, and accumulate when it meets knowledge made elsewhere? How do local practices, materials, and cultures shape what design research can know and say? And what emerges when those local conversations are held in productive tension with one another across distance?
Roams foregrounds the distributed, the multi-local, and the itinerant as generative conditions for practicing research through design. It embraces work-in-progress as a legitimate and valued form of knowledge contribution. It understands making not as the production of finished outcomes but as a continual, situated, and often unresolved process of inquiry that moves, accumulates, and leaves traces.
In this spirit, RTD Roams 2027 invites contributions that are themselves roaming: speculative, processual, open to encounters that invite change and growth.
RTD Roams discussion considerations
Each Roam will have its own character (which we will publish description of in the coming weeks), but collectively all of the Roams hosts ask authors to consider how their work can foster discussions at a Roam related to the following questions:
- How might materialities and acts of materialising—shaped by bodies, cultures, relationships, and worldviews—make situated knowledge visible and open new possibilities for practicing Research through Design?
- How do we learn from cultures and worldviews that give form to the invisible through distinct, culturally situated materialities around the world?
- Where, how and for whom is RtD knowledge and its resistances situated?
- What does it mean to explore relationality through RtD practice?
- What are more-than-human forms of making as a design condition, rather than a metaphor?
- How does design move beyond regenerative rhetoric to definitive methods for nature-net-gain?
- Does making research make research more accessible?
Roam Dates and Locations:
Naarm / Melbourne Roam, 6th-8th July 2027
Hosted at RMIT and Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
UK Roam, w/k 12th July 2027
Hosted at the University of York, UK, in partnership with Royal College of Art (RCA) & University of Brighton
Tokyo Roam, 26–28th of July 2027
Hosted at Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan
Key Dates
- Call for contributions announcement: 4th November 2026
- Submission of Extended Abstract: 1st February 2027
- Acceptance notification: 31st March 2027
- Early bird registration opens: 1st April 2027
- End of early bird registration: 31st of May 2027
- Camera ready proceedings: 14th of June 2027
Submission requirements
We invite submissions as an Extended Abstract of no more than 1000 words (excluding References, Captions), accompanied by 6 to 8 high-quality (300dpi) images. The images should show the practice itself, such as artefacts, work in progress, process or context, and each should have a short caption of no more than 20 words. Captions and references do not count towards the word limit. Submissions are made through EasyChair under the track for the Roam you wish to join, and will go through a single round of double-blind review. Please remove names, affiliations and other identifying details from the text, captions and image files.
Your abstract should describe the practice that you will bring (as a ‘thing’) to the Roam, the research questions you would like to explore and discuss there, and how the work connects to the character of a Roam. Please make the questions you will bring to the conference roundtable discussion explicit. The Roams are working sessions built around artefacts, so we invite questions that other participants can help you think through.
How submissions will be assessed
There is one round of review and no opportunity to revise, so submissions need to be strong in both of the following areas.
Practice: the submission is grounded in design practice, with work that can be shown, handled or discussed, including work in progress.
Research questions: the submission states clear questions that the practice raises and that would benefit from discussion in a Roam.
Among submissions that meet both, reviewers will also look for experimentation, meaning work that tests new approaches, formats or ways of making and takes risks, and for fit with the character of each Roam. Because places in each Roam are limited, final decisions also consider the balance of practices and thematic questions within the Roam as a whole.
We are explicitly open to contributions whose primary research form sits outside the traditional designed object. Documentary film, audio works, workshop toolkits, participatory scripts, annotated field recordings, performance scores. If it carries and communicates design knowledge in ways that a paper cannot, we want to see it. We take seriously the proposition that the material artefact itself can form an argument about how knowledge can be held and shared.
Publishing
Accepted abstracts will be published on https://figshare.com/ with a DOI. Some authors may also be invited to develop a paper to contribute to a special issue of the Design Journal.
Further details
Further details of the submission, including file size and the submission template, will be confirmed at a later date.
Registration costs
Registration fees differ across the three Roams: the Standard Rate will range from £350 for York, $350 (AUD) for Melbourne and ¥54,000 for Tokyo.
Fees are charged in the local currency of each host site. RTD Roams is run as a single conference series, but each Roam is organised and funded locally, and the fees reflect what it costs to host a three-day gathering in each place. Venue hire, catering, technical support and staffing all vary considerably between the UK, Australia and Japan, as does the cost of living for the people who make each event happen. Registration is only payable if your abstract is accepted, and there is no fee to submit.
We are also considering early bird discounts, including concessions for students and for participants from lower-income countries. We will confirm any discounts at the same time as the finalised registration fees are published.
Frequently asked questions
Do I submit to the overall RTD Roams, or to a specific host site (York, Melbourne/Naarm, Tokyo)?
You will submit to the RTD Roam submission site (via EasyChair) and select which location you want to submit to (York, Melbourne, Tokyo).
Does my choice of Roam depend on its character, or can I choose based on where I can travel to?
As hosts we encourage participants to consider submitting to the closest geographic Roam to where they are based and we are drawing on locality and situatedness in the character of each Roam. Attendance is in-person only with no hybrid option to join online via teleconference. You'll need to be physically present at the site you submit to. We recommend that contributors secure funds or funding approvals for travel expenses prior to submission, if possible.
If I submit 2 or more distinct submissions to different Roams and they are accepted would I need to pay registration costs?
Yes, you will need to register for each Roam you wish to attend.
How does the artefact-centred, round-table format actually work in practice? What should I expect if I have not been to an RTD conference before?
RTD places particular value on material artefacts and practice that are presented in person - building discussion around these rather than paper presentations. You'll bring a physical artefact with you, i.e. something that materially embodies an aspect of your research-through-design practice you're speaking to. Where work cannot travel, authors should bring a material trace of it, such as a model, sample, print, film or recording. This artefact is exhibited at the conference and also becomes the focal point for discussion. Rather than presenting to an audience, you'll take part in roundtable conversations in dedicated discussion rooms (Rooms of Interest), where your artefact anchors a facilitated discussion with other participants. (Specific guidance on size/mobility specifications for your artefact to follow soon.) Your artefact should be portable to be carried between the exhibition space and a roundtable discussion rooms during the event. With this in mind, we ask for 6 to 8 high resolution images (i.e. 300 dpi at actual size), so that the submission shows the practice as it was made: its materials, tests, contexts and decisions, as well as any finished outcome(s). Each Roam will provide guidance on display, installation and safety.
Is there a single CFP deadline across all three sites, or does each host set its own?
There is a shared deadline across all three sites. Please refer to Key Dates in this Call for more detail.
Will anything be shared across the 3 Roams?
Keynotes and panels will be recorded so people at other Roams can access recordings and presented materials afterwards.
Is funding/bursary support available, especially for early-career or unaffiliated researchers?
There is a tiered and early bird registration structure - Full details of registration options and fees to be published in December 2026.
Can PhD students / independent researchers / non-academic practitioners submit?
Yes. We welcome contributions from researchers, designers, creative practitioners and students from any discipline, and with any level of experience. RTD endeavours to provide a supportive and welcoming environment for design researchers and practitioners at all career stages.
If my submission is accepted but I cannot attend in person will my work be published as part of the Roam?
No. At least one author is required to attend the Roam where their submission is accepted and to bring with them a related artefact for presentation in the exhibition and roundtable discussion.
Is there a separate track or format for doctoral/early-career work?
No. We envisage RTD to be a venue open to the dissemination of work-in-progress (WIP). The single-round Extended Abstract review is designed to keep the bar accessible for accommodating WIP.
Will accepted work be published (Figshare, proceedings, journal special issue)?
Accepted work will be published on Figshare with a DOI. We have also secured a Special Issue with the Design Journal for RTD. Some authors will be invited to extend their written submission for consideration for this.
Contact
If you have a question about a particular Roam, you are welcome to contact its hosts directly:
York: rtdyork@gmail.com
Melbourne (Naarm): rtdmelbourne@gmail.com
Tokyo: rtd-tokyo@musabi.ac.jp