Led by Ash Eliza Smith
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Study Overview:
In this project we seek to demonstrate the power of community engagement in worldbuilding as a way to integrate substance use disorder (SUD) prevention, treatment, and recovery into planning for community wellbeing.
Specific Aims:
The overall goal of the project is to develop a transdisciplinary approach to SUD/mental health prevention, intervention, and treatment using speculative design and worldbuilding in a participatory community wellbeing change process.
Study Sample Population:
Year 1: Alliance/Sandhills, Nebraska
Unique Study Procedures:
Co-creation, Worldbuilding, Speculative Design
Ash Eliza Smith
Project Director
Ash Eliza Smith is an artist-researcher who uses storytelling, worldbuilding, and speculative design to shape new realities. With performance as both an object and lens, Smith works across art and science, between fact and fiction, and with human and non-human agents to re-imagine past and future technologies, systems, and rural-urban ecologies. She is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts at UNL and grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. Smith has worked as a producer, director, performer, and writer for various studios and media platforms. Her research lab within the Carson Center of Emerging Media Arts: Southern Devices, uses simulation, design fiction and narrative to solve problems, re-imagine systems, and build worlds with emerging technologies.