Melissa Q. Teng (she/they) is a design researcher, social practice artist, and writer based in Boston, MA.
Her public design practice is rooted in critical social theory, participatory action research methods, and humanistic experiential design. Her art practice often collaboratively explores questions, memories, and imaginations about displacement and belonging, with a particular focus on housing, homelessness, and prisons. She works across a variety of media and scales—institutions, neighborhoods, cities—always interested in how people come together to bend, upend, and repair the world around them.
Melissa's work has been generously supported by the Collective Futures Fund, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Sasaki Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, MIT's Public Service Center, the City of Boston, and more. They studied at the Dept. of Urban Studies + Planning at MIT, where they worked with the Data + Feminism Lab, and at the Civic Media: Art + Practice program based at the Engagement Lab at Emerson College. Her research about media, design process, crisis and care has been published in Big Data & Society, MIT Thresholds, New Media & Society, the proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM SIGCHI), and the International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction. Her work as a UX/visual/data designer has been recognized by the Webby’s, Kantar’s Information Is Beautiful, Awwwards, FastCompany’s World Changing Ideas, the New York Times, and others.
You can find her CV here.
Her public design practice is rooted in critical social theory, participatory action research methods, and humanistic experiential design. Her art practice often collaboratively explores questions, memories, and imaginations about displacement and belonging, with a particular focus on housing, homelessness, and prisons. She works across a variety of media and scales—institutions, neighborhoods, cities—always interested in how people come together to bend, upend, and repair the world around them.
Melissa's work has been generously supported by the Collective Futures Fund, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Sasaki Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, MIT's Public Service Center, the City of Boston, and more. They studied at the Dept. of Urban Studies + Planning at MIT, where they worked with the Data + Feminism Lab, and at the Civic Media: Art + Practice program based at the Engagement Lab at Emerson College. Her research about media, design process, crisis and care has been published in Big Data & Society, MIT Thresholds, New Media & Society, the proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM SIGCHI), and the International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction. Her work as a UX/visual/data designer has been recognized by the Webby’s, Kantar’s Information Is Beautiful, Awwwards, FastCompany’s World Changing Ideas, the New York Times, and others.
You can find her CV here.
Summer 2023 updates
- I’m thrilled to have my essay Between Fires published in this year’s Thresholds Journal. It’s about care and witnessing during overlapping crises, dedicated to my best friend and with thanks to the wonderful Garnette Cadogan.
- Grateful to be part of a civic design + art + research collective called See You in the Future with my friends / teachers George Halfkenny, Sabrina Dorsainvil, and Steve Walter. We’re honored to have our work-in-progress highlighted in a special issue of the Boston Art Review, in collaboration with the Collective Futures Fund (CFF). This was extra special because I got to be interviewed by my friend Matthew Okazaki for it.
- This summer, I’ll be completing my masters thesis in urban planning, reflecting on our team’s experiences doing a public art project around participatory narrative-building with street-based or unhoused, drug-using, and/or care-giving community members and activists.
- I’ll also be wrapping up my art + research residency with the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of Arts + Culture, where I’ve been working closely with Director of Public Art, Karin Goodfellow, to learn about institutional practices + processes. We’re asking: What role artists can play when embedded in civic institutions, and how can government stewards do well by their resident artist partners?
- Following the advice of a wise friend and mentor, Rashin Fahandej, I’ve been protecting my creative time and enjoying learning about video and audio production. I revisited an old video about my maternal grandparents to help me process and grieve. I shared it with my mom, and I’d love to share it with you.
- I am honored to design a collage for Catherine D’Ignazio’s new book, Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action.
