2026 Fall Lecture Series: J. Davis Harte

This lecture, Rooms that Remember Safety: Trauma-informed Design, explores how the design of home workspaces can either amplify stress and dysregulation or support emotional safety, focus, and flourishing. Drawing from the upcoming Routledge "Flourishing by Design Handbook: Unconventional Workplaces," the session examines trauma-informed principles that translate neuroscience, sensory awareness, and lived experience into practical environmental choices that help people feel more grounded, empowered, and human while working from home.

Join us on Tuesday, August 11, 2026, at 6PM in-person at the BAC's Cascieri Hall or virtually.

J. Davis Harte, PhD, WELL AP, TiD-P, Director and Faculty, BAC Design for Human Health, is an advocate, practitioner, and speaker who bridges trauma-informed spaces, children's places, and birth environment design with brain, neuroscientific, and environmental psychological knowledge. She teaches Environmental Psychology, Advanced Theories in Design for Wellbeing, and Play and Health in Designed Environments. She centers equitable representation and social justice for the global majority in her design work and scholarship. Davis holds a PhD in Health from the University of Technology Sydney, where she produced "The Childbirth Supporter Study': Video-ethnographic examination of the physical birth unit environment". She has multiple peer-reviewed publications and chapters on this and other topics. Her Master's degree in Design for Human Environments (interiors focus) from Oregon State University investigated preschool children's attentional behaviors, based on the randomized presence of houseplants. Her primary research and theoretical interests are systems theory, spatial justice, play, attention restoration theory, resilience, salutogenic and therapeutic design, symbolic interactionism, neuroscience, and evidence-based design.