Catherine Sarah Young

Email: catherinesarah.young@unsw.edu.au

Website: https://theperceptionalist.com/

Supervisors: Anna Munster, Tema Milstein, Claudia Tazreiter

Catherine Sarah Young, PhD is a Filipino-Chinese artist, designer, writer, and academic at UNSW Sydney School of Art & Design. She was born in Manila, Philippines and has since lived and worked in ten countries. She uses her background in molecular biology, fine art, and interaction design to inform her interdisciplinary art science practice about environmental and planetary issues. She was a Fulbright scholar in the MFA in Interaction Design programme of the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City. She has been selected for several art residencies and leadership fellowships worldwide, such as the Singapore-ETH Future Cities Laboratory, Institute for the Future, British Council, Obama Foundation, The Peace Studio, Homeward Bound, the Top 5 Arts media residency by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and others. She was one of Art Review Asia’s Future Greats in 2018, a 13 Artist Awards recipient in the Philippines in 2021, and was listed as one of the ’10 Women Leading the Fight against Climate Change’ by Earth.org in 2024. She has teaching experience in SVA (cybernetics and systems design, entrepreneurial design), UNSW (design studio 1 and 2), University of Technology Sydney (futures studies), and the University of the Underground (New Politics and Afrofuturism Programme). She obtained her PhD in June 2024 under the Scientia programme, with a dissertation entitled, ‘The Ghost of Rain: Investigating Petrichor as Companion Molecules in the Critical Zones through the Arts’.