Mette Volf is a teaching associate professor in the Department of Aesthetics and Communication – Art History, Aarhus University and teaches at the Aarhus School of Architecture. She has a PhD from Design at the Aarhus School of Architecture.

Mette Volf’s PhD project is called Når nogen ler, er der noget på spil. En undersøgelse af designprocessen som social konstruktion – herunder af humorens betydning for kreativiteten i designprocessen (When someone laughs there is something at stake. A study of the design process as social construct – including the influence of humour on creativity in the design process). In her dissertation Mette Volf examines the design process, focusing on aspects that are not normally articulated but exist only as tacit, internalised knowledge. Mette Volf has carried out interviews with designers and observations of their working process. She found that when the designers describe what they do, their design approaches and understandings may be very different. But she also found commonalities that designers are usually unaware of. Across approaches and subject fields, there are processes, mindsets, understandings and methods that appear fundamental to all design work; in Mette Volf’s research these similarities are identified as part of the designer’s tacit knowledge as internalised aspects of the collective life-world of the design environment.

Her PhD project sets out to generate knowledge about how and on what basis designers make choices, including the impact that the designer’s life-world, social environment and unspoken norms as well as the mutual interaction among designers have on the process and thus on the resulting artefact.

Humour plays a pivotal role in Mette Volf’s research. Her dissertation points out structural similarities between creativity and humour, presents theoretical approaches to humour and describes how humour may be incorporated into the creative process. For example, if a design team is in the process of generating new ideas, and a member of the team presents a poor idea, humour and jokes can be used to prevent any loss of face. In this way, humour can help ensure a safe and open environment with a great deal of latitude. But it can also be used with the opposite effect. In Mette Volf’s assessment, the education process socialises designers into the use of humour as a social strategy.

In analysing her observations, Mette Volf relies in part on social constructivist theories. A person’s knowledge, reality and point of departure vary depending on the social construction or “society” he or she enters into. Mette Volf compares the design profession with a society that has citizens (designers) and rules (acquired skills and unwritten norms that are shared by designers). People are shaped by society, just as society is shaped by people.

Mette Volf teaches visual culture and creative processes half-time as a teaching associate professor in the Department of Aesthetics and Communication – Art History, Aarhus University. She has teaching experience from a wide range of contexts including The Graphic College of Denmark, the Kolding School of Design, Danish University Extension and the Aarhus School of Architecture, where she also currently teaches half-time.

Mette Volf graduated as an architect from the Aarhus School of Architecture, Department of Furniture and Spatial Design in 1996. She completed additional training as an architecture educator in 1997. In 2012 she earned a PhD from the Aarhus School of Architecture.