Nida Abdullah

Nida Abdullah is an interdisciplinary maker, researcher and educator whose approach is rooted in softness and slowness as an ongoing practice of refusal. Her recent research centers gota adornment in textile design and fiber arts. Through gota, she explores embodied making as forms of witnessing. This work engages with inherited lineages of practices, materials, presences, histories, memories, bodies, temporals and false borders. She is currently a Research Collaborator at the Laboratory for Integrated Archaeological Visualization and Heritage.

With the group Post-Radical Pedagogy, she complicates teaching, questioning the values that shape design pedagogy, exploring the boundaries and limits of what is a pedagogical practice.

She is co-editor of the publication, Through Witnessing: Threading the critiquing, making, teaching of design from Set Margins’ Press.

She is currently Chair of the Academic Policy Committee for the Academic Senate.

Bachelor of Graphic Design (BGD), NC State University
Masters of Graphic Design (MGD), NC State University

Selected.

Books & Edited Volumes
Abdullah, Nida, Chris Lee, and Xinyi Li, eds. Through Witnessing: Threading the Critiquing, Making, Teaching of Design. Eindhoven: Set Margins, 2025.

Abdullah, Nida, ed. The Teachers Project: Criticisms on Design Pedagogy. Brooklyn, NY, August 2021.

Book Chapters
Abdullah, Nida, and Denise Gonzales Crisp. “Un-Critique Through Improvisation.” In Let’s Talk about Critique: Reimagining Art and Design Education, edited by Elissa Armstrong and Mariah Doren. Bristol: Intellect Press, 2023.

Abdullah, Nida, and Denise Gonzales Crisp. “I Wish Critique.” In Let’s Talk about Critique: Reimagining Art and Design Education, edited by Elissa Armstrong and Mariah Doren. Bristol: Intellect Press, 2023.

Walters, Kelly and Nida Abdullah. “Nida Abdullah.” In In Conversation with Black, Brown + Latinx Design Educators, edited by Kelly Walters. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2021.

Conference Papers & Presentations
Abdullah, Nida. “Gota and Gulshan: Poetic Adornment.” Paper presented at Cumulus Monterrey: Design Across Borders, United in Creativity, Universidad de Monterrey y Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico, October 16, 2024.

Abdullah, Nida. “a pedagogy of softness and slowness.” Panel presentation at the Educational Committee, College Arts Association Annual (CAA) Conference, Chicago, IL, February 17, 2024.

Abdullah, Nida and Gaia Scagnetti. “Teacher as Participant: Reconfiguring Authority as a Mode of Resistance.” Panel presentation at SECAC Panel, College Arts Association Annual (CAA) Conference, Chicago, IL, February 12, 2020.

Scagnetti, Gaia and Nida Abdullah. “Classroom as Resistance: Micro-Strategies for Design Education.” Paper presented at Cumulus Bogotá: The Design After, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, October 30, 2019.

Exhibitions
Abdullah, Nida. Gulshan: Poetic Adornment. Exhibition at Hajra Mansoor Gallery, Karachi School of Art (KSA), Karachi, Pakistan, September 25-27, 2024.

Abdullah, Nida and Swati Piparsania. Gota: Lineage of Adornment. Exhibition at HASTAC 2023: Critical Making and Social Justice, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, June 8-10, 2023.

Abdullah, Nida, Chris Lee, and Xinyi Li. Wall, Table, Lexicon: Publishing as Rehearsal. Post-Radical Pedagogy and Thick Press, exhibition space at Printed Matter Art Book Fair, New York, NY, October 13-16, 2022.

Abdullah, Nida and Zach Kaiser. Everything Speculative. Exhibition at Science Gallery Detroit: Hustle, Detroit, MI, June 16-August 25, 2018.