Joachim Halse is an assistant research professor at The Danish Design School.

As a researcher Joachim Halse works in the field of tension between anthropology and design, where he experiments with building a productive interaction between anthropological studies of everyday life on the one hand and design-oriented studies of new possibilities on the other.

Joachim Halse is associated with the research project Design-Anthropological Innovation Model (DAIM) at The Danish Design School. This project aims to develop a widely applicable design-anthropological innovation model based on a concrete pilot project about waste management. In the DAIM project design researchers work with the waste management firm Vestforbrænding and other project participants to develop user-centred design-anthropological innovation models. See the article User-Involvement Leads to More Sustainable Waste Management in the webzine Mind Design. The project is a collaborative effort involving design researchers and designers from The Danish Design School, Vestforbrænding, the Mads Clausen Institute, the University of Southern Denmark, and a number of design agencies in and outside Denmark.

The innovation potential of everyday life is one of the areas that Joachim Halse explores in his research. He believes that when we express our dreams, values and aspirations within the setting of our lifeworld together with a network of other experts in, e.g., product design, service design or environmental planning, the scene is set for an exploration of new potentials that draw explicitly on existing conditions as a resource rather than seeking to break free from them and invent the world from scratch. In a sense, this is a form of expanded user-involvement where the user is not simply included in the final stages of the design process to testify on the ease of use of a given product; instead the user is taken seriously as a dialogue partner for the design effort throughout the process. This sort of user involvement is an important aspect of the DAIM pilot project.

Joachim Halse is also interested in the ethnography of the possible. He sees a standing challenge in exploring the emergence of new design possibilities ethnographically even though the object of study has not yet come into existence. He is interested in discovering how a mix of descriptive and creative methods may be used to explore the new possibilities that lie within the horizon of imagination but which are not yet fully articulated.

A third focus area is design as performance, that is, early performances of design ideas as if they were already in place in the contexts where they are intended to operate and with the people who are the intended users. This helps visualise the practices that unfold once the idea is experienced in a social space and lets these practices influence the idea, thus challenging and refining it.

Joachim Halse has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Copenhagen and a master’s degree in information technology from the IT University of Copenhagen; in 2008, he earned a Ph.D. in design anthropology from the IT University of Copenhagen.