Faculty

Profile

Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo (she/her/ella) is Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons School of Design, a practitioner and scholar of social design and design education, and an internationally exhibited artist. Since joining The New School in 2003, she has held several leadership roles including as Dean of the School of Design Strategies (2020-24) and Associate Provost for Distributed and Global Education (2012-17). Cynthia serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Design Strategies, and is an active member of the design education networks of AIGA, Future of Design in Higher Education, and DEL Conference, for which she serves on the committee. As a consultant Cynthia has worked internationally with organizations such as CARE and the World Bank.  

A Fulbright scholar, her work on interdisciplinary design education, design and social impact, and the ethics of community engagement has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, including Visible Language and Dialectic; and as book chapters, including in publications by MIT Press and Routledge. The DEED Lab, which Cynthia co-founded in 2007 and currently directs, is known globally for its research on the artisan sector—especially critiquing the role designers and entrepreneurs play in contributing to extracting money and value from craft communities. Her artwork centered around themes of time and transience and award-winning digital poetry (with S. Strickland) have been exhibited and performed across the Americas and Europe, including at The Kitchen and HERE Arts Center in New York City, UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Point Éphémère in Paris, and the Museums of Modern Art in Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia.

Cynthia received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá) and a Master’s in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University’s ITP. The daughter of expats, she was raised in five different cities in Latin America and abroad, and now lives in possibly the smallest neighborhood in Brooklyn—Greenwood Heights.

Degrees Held

Master’s in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University’s ITP

B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá)

Recent Publications

Lawson Jaramillo, C. 2025. “Fair Trade and fairness in the artisan sector” in U. Bettig, J. Michel, P. Kenel, L. Pfeifer & P. Sawall (Eds.), Fair Trade, Textile Crafts and Fashion in the Context of Social, Ecological, Economic and Cultural Sustainability. transcript. (forthcoming)

Uzer, E., Lawson Jaramillo, C., and Kahane, M. 2025. “Equity and Inclusion” in J. Faludi (Ed.), Sustainable Design: From Vision to Action. Routledge. (forthcoming)

Frias, V., Lawson Jaramillo, C., Palacios, V. 2023. “¡No más! A Call for Designers to Stop Recolonizing Artisan Communities.” Dialectic, 5.1.

Performances and Appearances

"On the Politics of Helping," podcast interview, This is Design School

"Celebrar a los artesanos como diseñadores," podcast interview (in spanish), Diseño y Diáspora

An overview of the Parsons DEED Research Lab

Research Interests

design education, craft, artisan, social practice, social design, social innovation, ethics, community engagement

Awards And Honors

Fulbright Scholar, International Education Administrators program, France, 2013

Portfolio

Profile on Research Gate

DEED Lab website

DEED Lab instagram

Bluesky

Personal instagram