Extrapolation Factory

Extrapolation Factory Residency - Fall 2017

The Extrapolation Factory is pleased to introduce our first group of residents who have joined our studio in Brooklyn for a 3-month residency in the fall of 2017. The pilot for our residency program was set up to support experimental projects that advance the territory we’ve been working in, centering around design and democratized futures.


Nur Anisah Abdullah is an operations research analyst. She helps organisations plan strategically, and design, develop and implement performance measurement systems. Planning, measuring performance, and process design are inter-related activities for performance improvement. She uses foresight and scenario planning to help organizations go beyond just forecasting to generation of preferred futures. Her teaching and research work now extends to Futures Studies and higher education. In an effort to advance futures literacy, Anisah has created @Futures_Sandbox: an initiative for transformative action learning and youth development. The Sandbox aims to develop critical and reflective modes of awareness and inquiry. The Futures Sandbox is an independent, collaborative and open platform for workshops, seminars, and hands-on projects to educate and inspire youth toward imagining and creating preferred futures. Anisah conducts workshops using games and exercises in taking participants into a future mental space.

Ron Morrison is a designer, artist, and urbanist. Their practice works to create strategies using art and design that help people understand how urban systems work and how to act within their fissures and inconsistencies. From these dissonant spaces we learn to rework and retune systems towards an increased potential for collaboration and action. With a strong background in community development and social advocacy, they believe that people should have full access to shaping their cities and communities and sees design as a medium for creating knowledge and moving beyond paralysis in the face of complexity. From building open source platforms to upend the continued practice of solitary confinement to crafting community based archives to combat gentrification, their work investigates cartographies of slow violence, black spatial imaginaries, and embodied data.

They have worked with design teams that implemented projects in New Orleans, Ghana, Colombia, Ethiopia, New York, and Venice and have had work featured in AIA New York, Project Row Houses, and the Tribeca Film Festival. Ron holds degrees in Psychology and Gender Studies, as well as a graduate degree in Design and Urban Ecologies from Parsons School of Design. They currently teach in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design.

Treva Ellison is committed troublemaker, prison abolitionist, artist, amateur herbalist, and talented grilled cheese chef, who also happens to work as an Assistant Professor of Geography and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Treva’s interests are trans and queer historiography and archives, black geographies, cartography, and carceral geographies. Treva’s writing can be found in places like Transgender Studies Quarterly, C Magazine, Feminist Wire, and Scholar and Feminist Online. Treva is currently working on their manuscript project, Flex Zones, which traces the articulation of trans and queer criminality in relation to the racialization of space and theorizes the relationship between blackness, gender, the carceral state, and racial capitalism. Treva earned their doctorate in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California in 2015 and currently works at Dartmouth College.

John A. Sweeney is the Global Futures and Foresight Coordinator at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. At the IFRC, John's work focuses on helping the world's largest humanitarian organization use the future to better meet the needs of affected communities. As a consultant and practitioner, John has worked in over 30 countries with an emphasis on Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Asia-Pacific for a range of governments and international humanitarian and development agencies and organizations. Currently, John is a PhD Candidate at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa (UHM) where served as a Researcher at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies. John also acts as Deputy Director at the Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies.