Draft:Michael Kaethler

Michael Kaethler (born 20 December 1980) is a Canadian/Italian design theorist, author, curator and a director of the Experimental Observatory on Artistic Freedom. At the University of Glasgow, he completed an MA in Slavonic and Central European Studies and at KU Leuven he completed a Masters in Human Settlements and later a PhD with an epistemologically oriented focus on Curation and socially-oriented design under Frank Moulaert and Hilde Heynen.

Writing, research and teaching
Kaethler has worked as a researcher in a number of fields, including in the context of human rights for the United Nations and in the field of design and social-anthropology.. This has led to publications in scientific and practitioner literature, including the books Social Matter, Social Design and The Auto-Ethnographic Turn in Design and multiple scientific journal articles and book chapters on themes related to social and creative coalescence.

He is an OSMOS 'Expert', a research associate at the department of architecture at KU Leuven and a lecturer for the Masters of Transdisciplinary design at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED).

Curatorial work
Kaethler's curatorial activities tend towards the experimental, focusing on social issues and using participatory or engaged methods. From 2013-2018, he was the curator for TRADERS, including dialogical and participatory exhibitions in the UK, Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark. He co-curated the San Marino Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale with the project 'Ospite, Ospitante' with a focus on the theme of hospitality. As part of this project, he co-founded the Hospitality Lab (with Alice Fraccaro and Federica Natalia Rosati), which hosted dozens of individuals and groups from different sectors of society to reflect on the materialisation of accepting otherness

In 2024, Kaethler, with the artist and editor-in-chief David Liver, co-founded the research, writing and curatorial project the Experimental Observatory on Artistic Freedom, involving exhibitions and publications through a partnership with the Council of Europe.