DrAkari Nakai Kidd

Dr Nakai Kidd is SEBE Faculty Deputy Director of Deakin University’s HOME Strategic Research and Innovation Centre (SRIC). Her research centres the lived experiences of vulnerable communities, advancing participatory co-design and value co-creation to promote housing equity and social wellbeing. She has led and contributed to interdisciplinary projects including A Home, Not Housing: Empowering Women Survivors of Domestic Violence through the Co-design of a Good-Home Design Blueprint, funded by the Alastair Swayn Foundation. Her current project, Homes that Heal (2025-), explores how home environments can better support the health, safety, and development of children and families experiencing vulnerability. She also co-leads strategic initiatives advancing social equity through transdisciplinary research and collaborative knowledge exchange. These include Home Truths (2025) and Collaborate for Change (2026), a housing justice initiative bringing together six Regional, Rural and Remote (RRR) Community Legal Centres across Victoria to address the distinctive housing challenges faced by regional communities and support systemic change.

 

Her publications span architecture, affect theory, social justice, and professional practice. She is the author of manuscripts Affect, Architecture and Practice: Toward a Disruptive Temporality of Practice (2021) and co-author of Diversity in Architecture: Intersectionality, Affective Politics, and Creating Change (2025). Prior to entering academia, she practised architecture with Kengo Kuma & Associates in Tokyo, an experience that continues to inform her research and teaching.