Dr. Emilia Tikka is a transdisciplinary design researcher and filmmaker. Her work is situated between technoscientific cultures and what are often described as Indigenous knowledge cultures, exploring design as an intercosmological practice. Since 2020, her research is situated in the Arctic, intersecting design, anthropology, and feminist and postcolonial STS to explore human relations with nature(s), science, and technology, with a particular focus on the politics of ontology, realities, and relational modes of existence.

Prior to her doctoral research, her artistic practice explored societal implications of contemporary biosciences by materializing scenarios of imagined futures. She has often collaborated with scientists through artist residencies. Her earlier work focused particularly on the genome-editing technology CRISPR, engaging with themes such as the futures of psychology, aging, and reproduction.

Her artistic research practice continues to be based on materializing collaborative imaginaries of other worlds through speculative storytelling, filmmaking, mapping, and artefact creation. In her intercosmological practice, speculation forms a non-hierarchical in-between space, opening a dialogue between knowledge cultures and ways of being.

She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the four-year POPULUS project, funded by the Research Council of Finland and affiliated with the Department of Social Sciences at Tampere University. Her recent research is situated in Greenland and is conducted in collaboration with ETH Zürich. She holds a Doctor of Arts degree from the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at Aalto University. Her doctoral research was supported by the Kone Foundation. Her monograph, Design in Between Worlds, presents research grounded in long-term collaborative artistic work in the nomadic reindeer worlds of Sápmi and engagements with bioscientists working in epigenetics. 

Emilia Tikka is an Associate Member of the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and former advisor for the Cluster project CollActive Materials. Her previous affiliations include serving as a Visiting Scholar at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin at the Helmholtz Center for Cultural Techniques, a Research Associate at Tampere University, Artist-in-Residence at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Artist-in-Residence with Tokyo Art and Science, and Artist-in-Residence for the two-year Art4Med project. She also holds an MA from Universität der Künste Berlin. She has published her research in high-ranking journals such as Qualitative Research and presented her research in conferences such as 4S and International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS).

Her art and design works have been presented in a solo exhibition at Schering Stiftung in Berlin and in group exhibitions at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Ars Electronica, New York University Abu Dhabi Arts Center, Gregg Museum of Art & Design in the USA, Imagine Science Film Festival in NYC, Seinäjoki Kunsthalle in Finland, Tekniska Museet in Stockholm, The Cité Internationale Des Arts in Paris, among others. Her work and research have also been featured in Nature, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Freitag, Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin Art Link, and ARTE, among others.