Keynote speaker: Cut, Cut — Cuts Australian Council of University Art & Design Schools (ACUADS) Conference — December 2 2025
Panel speaker:Spatial Justice Imaginaries Diffracting the Critical STS Hub 2025 ― Berlin, March 11 – 14 2025
Embodied Restoration Lab | Symposium at the Nieuwe Instituut initiated by architect Afaina de Jong (Rotterdam, Netherlands), 18 - 19 April 2024
Invited speaker: Interactive Experiences DDW Talks, 2022 w/ Tamara Shogaolu (Ado Ato Pictures), Nadine Roestenburg (Programme Manager STRP), Cream on Chrome & moderated by Oli Stratford (Editor-in-Chief at Disegno)
Invited speaker: Intersecting Differences, symposium ‘The Road to Equity: From Awareness to Empowerment’, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft, organised by BK Diversity & Inclusion, 6 October 2023
Invited speaker: Queer Refusal | Roundtable w/ Adam Nathaniel Furman, Dhiren Borisa, Kareem Khubchandani, Katarina Bonnevier, KNeo Mokgopa, Vikramaditya Sahai & moderated by Aastha D (w/ thanks to Rohit Rajak). Conversation published in Disegno#34, (Autumn, 2022)
Guest speaker: Meet the Masters | Stedelijk Museum, Afaina de Jong (March 2022), Presenting A Glitch in the System alongside the work and ideas of architect Afaina de Jong, and Rachel Rumai, moderated by Mirthe Frese
Space of Other |17th Venice Architecture Biennale | Afaina De Jong
Afaina de Jong in conversation with designers, artists and researchers about the kinds of values, methodologies and knowledges essential to developing a design paradigm connected to The Multiplicity of Other: Emmanuel Admassu, architect and founding partner with Jen Wood of AD-WO; Frédérique Albert-Bordenave, artist & art-director; Samir Bantal, architect, Director of AMO Rotterdam; Joseph Zeal Henry, designer and urban¬ist, co-host Sound Advice; Khensani de Klerck, architectural designer and planner, founder and co-director of Matri-Archi(tecture); Gabriel A. Maher, designer; Wayne Modest, Director of Content National Museum of WorldCultures and Wereldmuseum Rotterdam / Head of Research Center for Material Culture; Farida Sedoc, visual artist; Aruna Vermeulen, co-founder and director of HipHopHuis Rotterdam.
Keynote speaker: Mediated Bodies, Fresh Talks | National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. USA, with Alice Rawsthorn.
Invited Speaker: Transformation Marathon 2015, Serpentine Galleries, with Alice Rawsthorn, Hillary Cottam, Christien Meindertsma
Invited Speaker: HNI for the Record: Performing Gender | The articulation of gender through the cinematographic gaze and the performing body.
With Eliza Steinbock (Assistant Professor of Cultural Analysis at Leiden University), Emmanuel Adjei (film director and visual artist) and Gabriel A. Maher (designer) & moderated by radio-dj, reporter and host Shay Kreuger.
Invited Speaker: CAMP Masculine Practice | The Future of Gender in Spatial Design
Het Nieuwe Instituut, Talks by Adeola Enigbokan and Gavin Blau with contributions from Arna Mackic, Gabriel A. Maher, and Pamela Prickett, Marianthi Tatari.
Invited speaker: La revolución de los espacios. Objeto indirecto
lecture series hosted by Madrid Design Week, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 7 February 2019
Performance | Technologies For Seductive Criticism, DDW 2016, No Particular Order
Performances for Technologies for Seductive Criticism compose a text/image/soundscape and deliver research (digital archives) through the tools of the DJ. Text fragments from the digital archive are fabricated into an absurd script. This script is activated through hybrid readings; spoken word, concrete poetry. The performative outcome combines mechanisms of multi-media performance lecture and technology. The technology acts as a catalyst to understand the development of body-techniques within the digital archive (and digital media platforms).
Whitechapel Gallery | Deisgn and Gender Identity
Design critic Alice Rawsthorn as she moderates a debate about the role of gender identity in design, from early prejudices towards women to contemporary theory, with Gabriel A. Maher and Mathilda Tham
The conversation considers whether design culture has become less misogynistic, and felt any impact from the ongoing debate about gender transition. The discussion speculates how the evolution of an increasingly eclectic and fluid concept of gender identity will redefine the traditional feminist arguments.
Performance | Intersections: Mapping the Queer Body – in ‘Eleutheria: A Queer European Film & Arts Festival’ – curated by Carlota Jerez.
This performance appropriates the tools of the DJ from a queer, feminist perspective to create a critical landscape of bodies in which questions around identity, sexism, racialization, exploitation, race, or class are at play. The piece combines Maher’s design work, which examines the ‘mediated bodies’ produced in Western digital platforms, with Mager’s work, which focuses on the invisibility of workers’ bodies and exploitative patterns in the production of digital devices, thus subverting and queering systems of image production, consumption, and representation.
Eleutheria as part of EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture), Representing the Netherlands, hosted by Frank Schipper. Performance and roundtable at Kulturhuset, Stockholm.
Design Debate | Frame Magazine with Frame Magazine editor Enya Moore
The Frame Magazine Analysis was presented to the editors of the magazine and sparked a public dialogue, which was held, in the form of a design debate between the editors and myself. In this way, the research became performative and active while creating a space for dialogue and an opportunity for collaboration.
Eleutheria round table discussion after the individual screenings and performances with film maker Victoria Verseau, Designers Gabriel Maher, Isabel Mager, Activist Samuel Girma and curator Carlota Jerez.
Sonic Reading | Stedelijk Museum
Performance & collaboration with Herman Verkerk/EventArchitectuur, Isabel Mager & Gabriel A. Maher & the Props at the Stedelijk Museum Book Club 2017, for the launch of Events Situating the Temporary, 2017
Performance Lecture | HDK – Academy of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg. With professor Judith Seng
Performance | De_sign, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam. NAiM / Bureau Europa stage
An evening on the rise of performance as a fundamental act of design. Off the Record: Design Performs in the Wormhole between Milan and Rotterdam, with Saskia Van Stein, Tamar Shafiri & Guus Beumer
Design Academy Eindhoven, DDW, 2016 ‘In Need Of …’ The Arena | Round Table – Queering Design. With current graduates Olle Lundin, Isabel Mager, Renee Mes, Floriane Misslin, Josh Wolford. Moderated by DAE alumnus Gabriel Maher.