Sarah Edmands Martin
Assistant Professor, Design
Area: Design
Education
B.A., University of Maryland
MFA, University of Notre Dame
Research Interests
Digital Storytelling, Artist Books, Typography, Infographics, Stop Motion Animation, Moving Image, Folk and Fairytales
Biography
As a designer, storyteller, and researcher, Sarah reimagines the ways social and civic systems distribute and exercise power within contemporary, mediated spaces. Originally from the Washington D.C. area, she is now located in the American Midwest where her work responds to site-specific and archival materials, rendering the delightful and the unsettling in these narratives more visible in order to emphasize how social fictions of identity, power, and oppression proliferate. A constellation of critical theories inform her practice, including phenomenology, media theory, narratology, and speculative fabulation.
Before joining the design faculty at the University of Notre Dame, she was the head of the Graphic Design program at Indiana University in Bloomington. A 2024 Fulbright Scholar, a 2023 Design Writing Fellow at Chicago's Writing Space, a 2021–22 Research Fellow at the Institute for Digital Arts + Humanities, a 2020 Design Incubation Fellow, and a 2019–21 Faculty Affiliate with the Center for Rural Engagement, she is also the author of two chapters in Ethics in Design and Communication: New Critical Perspectives (Bloomsbury 2020) as well as a forthcoming chapter in Digital Transformation in Design: Processes and Practices: Essays, Case Studies, and Interviews (Amherst College Press 2024). Her design work has been recognized and published by PRINT, Graphis, the Paris Design Awards, London International Creative, and the Creative Communication Awards.
She has taught design at Indiana University, University of Notre Dame, and Missouri University of Science & Technology, and continues to balance an active studio practice with both research and pedagogy. Her portfolio of clients includes Citibank, AMC’s the Walking Dead, the Snite Museum of Art, Whirlpool, Herman Miller, and Cook Medical—to name a few.
She holds bachelor's degrees in studio art and English from the University of Maryland and received her MFA in visual communication design from the University of Notre Dame.
