Imen BEN YOUSSEF ZORGATI

Imen Ben Youssef Zorgati holds a professional master’s degree in Sciences et techniques des arts, option architecture d’intérieur from the École des Beaux-Arts de Tunis, a Diplôme d’études approfondies en Arts et sciences de l’art from the Université Paris I, Panthéon Sorbonne and a doctorate (PhD) in Arts et sciences de l’art, option Arts appliqués/Design from the same institution.

Following her studies in Paris, Imen Ben Youssef Zorgati joined the École supérieure des sciences et technologies du Design, ESSTED to teach interior design. The following year, she became head of the space design department (interior architecture and scenography) and began a dual career as a professor-researcher and university administrator. In 2009, she became Dean of ESSTED. In 2015, after obtaining her HDR, Imen Ben Youssef Zorgati was appointed Associate Professor (Maître de conférences) at the Institut supérieure des beaux-arts de Tunis, her alma mater, and three years later took over the management of the institute and the direction of ISBAT’s Research Unit and Doctoral School as University Professor (full professor since June 2020).

When she came to Montreal, she was invited to teach at the University of Montreal’s School of Design as a visiting professor and to participate in the Design and Society Research Group’s research on the integration of collaborative design into design processes.

In January 2023, she was appointed Director of the School of Design in the Faculté de l’aménagement at Université de Montréal and Associate Professor of Interior Design.

Imen Ben Youssef Zorgati also has a rich record of research. Her scientific work lies at the intersection of interior design and the humanities and social sciences. On the one hand, she is interested in living spaces, the materials that give them shape, and constructive practices and techniques from a semiotic, psychosociological, anthropological and ecological perspective. On the other, she is interested in design practices and processes as intellectual, artistic, social, ecological and political processes, and aims to improve them through research by and for design.