Mio Kojima (they/them) is a Berlin-based German-Japanese design educator, editor/publisher, and curator focusing on knowledge politics and social justice in and through design. Drawing from intersectional feminist pedagogy, decolonial theory, and self-organised methodology, Mio’s practice critically examines the conditions and formats of learning and coming together.

Along with Maya Ober, Mio is running Futuress, an intersectional feminist publisher and online platform at the crossroads of design and social justice. Futuress aims to problematize the role of design in systems of oppression and discrimination and explores design’s potential for change. Maya and Mio curate public learning programs, facilitate fellowships, and accompany the Futuress authors in developing their texts.

In their research and teaching practice, Mio’s work often centers on process documentation of self-organised structures, prompts for (somatic) experience, and critical interventions to discuss the politics of collaboration and space-making and expand hegemonic ways of doing.

Until 2024, Mio gave creative workshops for teenagers as a mentor within the Digital Spark’s program of the Education Innovation LAB, and the Make Your School Hackdays by Wissenschaft im Dialog to make the school kids’ voices heard through hacking and making projects and storytelling from podcasts to zines.

In recent years, Mio has also given lectures and panel discussions on design politics, publishing, and feminist educational practices at the University of the Arts London, Kyoto Institute of Technology, NYU New York City University, Kunsthochschule Kassel, Kunsthochschule Weissensee, Hochschule Düsseldorf, Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt, and the Weltformat Festival Luzern, among others.

Mio’s writing has been published in Glossary of Undisciplined Design (ed. Anja Kaiser and Rebecca Stephany, Spector Books, 2021) and First, Then... Repeat. Workshop Scripts in Practice (ed. Anja Groten, Hackers & Designers, 2022), among others.

After leaving their studies of media studies and art history at the University of Tübingen (DE) in 2014, Mio studied communication design and exhibition design/scenography (the latter with a focus on dramaturgy and curatorial practices) at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (DE) and strategic design at Kyushu University in Fukuoka (JP).

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