Emma Baumhofer

Emma Baumhofer is a transdisciplinary researcher and designer whose work spans interaction design, ecology, digital peacebuilding, and the humanities. She develops tools, frameworks, and experiences that connect people to place, each other, and more-than-human worlds. Her design research explores friction and slowness as productive forces for attention and care, and she uses sound and data as materials for making ecological and social relationships perceptible. Recent work includes Tuning to place: designing attention through Ticino’s soundscapes, fieldwork-based research into amphibian migration and shared local ecologies in Southern Switzerland. In her peacebuilding work, she collaborates with experts in gender, mediation, and transitional justice to critically analyze the impact of technology on communities in conflict and to harness digital tools for social cohesion. She advises foreign ministries, international organizations, and grassroots practitioners, and develops networks, workshops, and continuing education formats for international partners. Emma holds an MA in Interaction Design from SUPSI, an MA and MSc in International and Global History from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, and a BA in Anthropology and English from UC Berkeley. At metaLAB Basel, Emma contributes her expertise in digital peacebuilding and technology ethics and is a researcher with the Climate Sound & Society Institute, advancing Basel’s focus on sensing ecologies and human-ecological health through fieldwork-based inquiry into soundscapes and the social dimensions of environmental attention.