Dr Desiree Ibinarriaga is an Indigenous Mexican woman with Mayan, Nahua, Basque and Spanish heritage. Desiree is an educator, researcher, creative practitioner, collaborative and social design maker and thinker. She is Lecturer at Monash Art Design and Architecture, and Coordinator for Indigenous Higher Degrees by Research being part of Wominjeka Djeembana Indigenous Research Lab.

Desiree is a passionate creative practitioner, designer, researcher, educator and traveller. She has over 16 years of experience in the design field, across diverse disciplines, such as furniture, interior, social, collaborative, decolonising and Indigenous design. Desiree’s work focuses on Indigenous peoples’ building of capacity and better ways of partnership and communication between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people through design, by recognising the relationality between people and environment while acknowledging the world as a unit. Her teaching practice encourages students to develop understanding of Indigenous methodologies and their own cultural identity through a collaborative design practice.

Since 2012 she has collaborated with diverse Indigenous communities, organisations and universities in Mexico, Australia, Japan, Canada and Taiwan. She wrote the book Decolonising and Indigenising Design: Theory, Methodologies, Storytelling, and Creative Practice. Taylor & Francis, 2025.

She created the Critical Co-design methodology which is an Indigenous methodology for respectfully collaborating with Indigenous peoples, acknowledging the interconnection between relationality, Place, identity (positionality) and methodology in the field of co-design. The methodology encourages the collaboration between diverse Indigenous and non-Indigenous people while privileging Indigenous knowledges enhancing biocultural diversity conservation and regeneration towards collaborative resilience, cultural identity pride and sustainability.