Biography

Susan Campbell is an interdisciplinary designer working at the intersection of tenant activism, design advocacy, and critical urban theory. She holds an MDes in Design from York University in Toronto and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art, Media & Design from OCAD University in Toronto. Campbell investigates how the tenant movement engages in extra-legal resistance against financialized urban processes playing out across Canada’s shrinking stock of affordable multi-family rentals, development sites, and public lands. Her most recent design work uses informative systems mapping to synthesize and problematize how various mediums—such as texts, procedures, and discourses—purport to make Canada’s housing system more equitable, yet in practice contribute to ongoing discriminatory housing instability. In addition to exhibiting across Canada and internationally, Campbell has received numerous grants from Canada Council of the Arts and Ontario Arts Council.