MA Talk & Tour 2025

On January 14, 2025, Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) welcomes students to our annual MA Talk & Tour. This full-day programme is held live at DAE in Eindhoven (NL) and offers an opportunity for prospective students to explore our facilities, ask questions about the MA study in research-based design, and learn about our five MA departments: Critical Inquiry Lab, Information Design, Geo-Design, Social Design and Contextual Design. Furthermore, department heads and tutors will conduct live admissions conversations with applicants in the afternoon.

MA study at DAE
The two-year Master course at DAE offers students an educational setting to work intensively with leading professionals in the field of design, as well as its adjacent disciplines. As the field’s self-reflexivity rapidly evolves, MA students are provided mentorship towards the development of their own practice and research interests, responsive to contemporary analyses of our time. Throughout the study, students encounter diverse research-based design skills, tools, materials, concepts and processes, interweaving theoretical knowledge with know-how. The MA sees design as a transdisciplinary mode of thinking by making, where students explore various methods of material manipulation, conduct field research, analyze and produce data, speculate on future histories, collaborate with other fields of knowledge, and learn how to position their authorial voice within the noise of our complex societies. In strengthening capacities to develop their practices, students also reflect on the design profession and its limits at large in the course of investigating their topical research interests. At the MA level it’s our mandate to foster pedagogies of “co-autonomy” for burgeoning design professionals, for which a nourishing, international peer environment is offered to host the playful risk-taking that research-based design necessarily elicits.

About DAE
Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) is one of the world’s leading design schools, recognised internationally for its forward-thinking and renowned professors and alumni. For over 70 years it has trained aspiring designers to make their mark on the future by thinking freely and openly about what design can achieve, consistently exploring design as an instrument of material, social, environmental and critical innovation.

The Master programmes at DAE consist of five research departments.

Critical Inquiry Lab 
Heads of department: Saskia van Stein, artistic and managing Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam and Patricia Reed, theorist, artist, and designer.

Information Design
Head of department: Marco Ferrari (Studio Folder)

Geo-Design 
Heads of department: Metahaven, artists working in design, filmmaking, and writing.

Social Design 
Head of department: Nadine Botha, research designer, editor, writer, and curator.

Contextual Design 
Head of department: Afaina de Jong, AFARAI, architect and researcher.

MA Talk & Tour 2025 programme
Meet tutors and alumni: During the MA Talk & Tour Department Heads will be joined by tutors and alumni to discuss their programmes, and what it’s like to study at DAE. Our community of tutors are all professionals from, or related to, the design field with both national and internationally recognized practices. We encourage students to take a look at graduation projects of our recent alumni for a sampling of their work.

Support and administration: Studying is a moment of transformation while experimenting with unfamiliar processes, orienting to a new surrounding, and challenging boundaries of thought. At DAE our student body is highly international, and we value our programme as space for the mingling of different backgrounds. During the MA Talk & Tour our student counsellor will be present to answer questions related to student support structures. For practical issues regarding visas, housing, or tuition fees, students will also be able to meet the student administration.

Tour: On January 14, 2025, students will have the opportunity to visit the workshops, working areas and meeting spaces at DAE by taking a guided tour through the school.

Live admissions: This year we offer the opportunity to fast-track your application during the event, with on-site admissions interviews. Read more and apply here.