John Bruce
Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management
Email
johnbruce@newschool.edu
Office Location
Parsons Faculty Hotseat
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Profile
John A. Bruce is a filmmaker, designer, researcher, and educator. He is Assistant Professor of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design, and serves as Co-Director of the Transdisciplinary Design MFA program, and Co-Director of the Consortium for Transdisciplinarity.
His work involves participatory artistic- and design-based research, image-oriented narrative, restorative justice, and complex dynamic systems.
He directed and produced, in partnership with Paweł Wojtasik, the feature-length nonfiction film End of Life, as well as many independent short films and installations. His work has been exhibited internationally, including the New York Film Festival, Cinéma du Réel, Museum of the Moving Image, Doclisboa, Thessaloniki Film Festival, ICA London, Chicago Film Festival, The Julliard School, and The Brooklyn Academy of Music, among others. He served as production manager and art director for a number of feature films, and platform producer for several transmedia projects addressing social issues. He is senior strategist at Forward Mapworks, a consultancy, recently providing strategy for the Light Phone, a simple phone that provokes reflection on our relationships with technology and our ability to be present. John served as the President of the Board of Trustees for the Flaherty Film Seminar.
He was a 2015/16 Fellow at the Graduate Institute for Design Ethnography and Social Thought at The New School.
Degrees Held
Presidio (Pinchot University), MBA 2009
School of Visual Arts, BFA 1987
Recent Publications
Participatory Design and Social Transformation: Images and Narratives of Crisis and Change. 2022
Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon. 2020. Chapter, "Mortality." Editors: Eduardo Staszowski and Virgina Tassinari
Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design. 2017. Chapter, “Design Strategies for Impact.” Editor: Rachel Beth Egenhoefer
End of Life, nonfiction film. 2017. Directed by John Bruce and Paweł Wojtasik. Co-producers: HAOS Film and Train-Tracks Inc. (USA, Greece)
Research Interests
Restorative justice, narratology, hauntology, ancestral knowledge, body and land, belonging, reconciliation, community wealth, end of life, cinema, transition and transformation.
Portfolio
End of Life
MFA Studio: Design for Living and Dying
John A Bruce