Portrait of Samar Sabie

Samar Sabie

Assistant Professor

I am an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology at the University of Toronto where I direct the Open Design Colaboratory. I also hold a graduate appointment at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Landscape. My research investigates the role design as a socio-material practice can play in how communities develop an adaptive capacity towards sustainable change. My research draws on my multidisciplinary training in architecture, software engineering, ethnography, and philosophy.

Education
Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Information Science, Cornell University/Cornell Tech, 2022
Master of Science, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 2017
Master of Architecture, The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto, 2015
Honors Bachelor of Science (Architecture and Computer Science), University of Toronto, 2011

Publications

  • Taneea Agrawal, Samar Sabie, Robert Soden. 2024. Moving Towards Mobility Justice: Challenges and Considerations for Supporting Advocacy. In Proceedings ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). Forthcoming.
  • Samar Sabie, Robert Soden, Steven J. Jackson, and Tapan Parikh. 2023. Unmaking as Emancipation: Lessons and Reflections from Luddism. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), Hamburg, Germany. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581412
  • Awais Hameed Khan, Samar Sabie, and Dhaval Vyas. 2023. The Pragmatics of Sustainable Unmaking: Informing Technology Design through e-Waste Folk Strategies. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1531–1547. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3596056
  • Samar Sabie, Steven J. Jackson, Wendy Ju, and Tapan Parikh. 2022. Unmaking as Agonism: Using Participatory Design with Youth to Surface Difference in an Intergenerational Urban Context. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22), New Orleans, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501930
  • Tapan Parikh and Samar Sabie. 2020. On destruction in design. In SIGCAS Comput. Soc. 49, 3 (December 2020), 14–15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3447913.3447921
  • Dina Sabie, Samar Sabie, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2020. Memory through Design: Supporting Cultural Identity for Immigrants through a Paper-Based Home Drafting Tool. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20), Honolulu, United States. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376636
  • Samar Sabie and Tapan Parikh. 2019. Cultivating Care through Ambiguity: Lessons from a Service Learning Course. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019), Glasgow, Scotland, UK. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300507
  • Dina Sabie, Samar Sabie, Cansu E. Dedeoglu, Yasaman Rohanifar, Fatma Hashim, Steve Easterbrook, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2019. Exile Within Borders: Understanding the Limits of the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Iraq. In Proceedings of the 2019 Workshop on Computing Within Limits (LIMITS ’19), Lappeenranta, Finland. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3338103.3338104
  • Samar Sabie, Jay Chen, Azza Abouzied, Fatma Hashim, Harleen Kahlon, and Steve Easterbrook. 2017. Shelter Dynamics in Refugee and IDP Camps: Customization, Permanency, and Opportunities. In Proceedings of the 2017 Workshop on Computing Within Limits (LIMITS ’19), Santa Barbara, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3080556.3080560
  • Maha Salman, Samar Sabie, Steve Easterbrook, and Josie Abate. 2016. Sustainable and Smart: Rethinking What a Smart Home Is. In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S ‘16), Amsterdam, The Netherlands. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2991/ict4s-16.2016.22 
  • Samar Sabie, Maha Salman, and Steve Easterbrook. 2016. Situating Shelter Design and Provision in ICT Discourse for Scarce-Resource Contexts. In Proceedings of the Second ACM Workshop on Computing within Limits (LIMITS '16), Irvine, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2926676.2926686

Other

Specialization
Design for Social Justice
Participatory Design
Unmaking
Current Courses
CCT204 Design Thinking I; CCT477 Understanding Users