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I would like to express my gratitude to the Design History Society for awarding me the 2016 Research Publication Grant. This funding will go towards covering the costs of clearing image rights for my forthcoming book Designing for Socialist Need: Industrial Design Practice in the German Democratic Republic (Routledge, 2017).
Reports
Over the last five years there has been a shift within design history away from the preoccupation with national studies in design, towards interrogating the constructedness of culture and national identity as such (eg Engelke & Hochscherf, 2015; Gimeno-Martinez, 2016) and furthermore with rethinking design within a complex set of global or transnational networks and contexts (eg Adamson, Riello & Teasley, 2011; Kirkham & Weber, 2013; Huppatz, 2015; Margolin, 2015; Edwards, 2015; Fallan & Lees-Maffei, 2016; El Maasri, PhD 2016; et al). This scholarly shift is also tangible in the re-cataloguing and re-display of design objects in museums, as was apparent in curatorial presentations at the Taipei-based International Conference on Design History and Design Studies on ‘Building Trans/national Contemporary Design History’ held in October, for example.
Reports
The Design History Society Student Conference Bursary award, granted me the generous opportunity to attend the 2016 Annual Design History Society Conference Design and Time at Middlesex University; where I presented the paper “The emergence of Social Design Through Time and Space”. This paper forms part of my ongoing PhD dissertation: “Designing a Future Practice: A genealogy of the Social Design Discourse in the UK, 1970s-present”, at the University of Brighton. The broader research project traces the inclusion of social responsibility within the design profession in the UK, from the 1970s to present in the context of conferences and exhibitions, as a backdrop from which to analyse discursive shifts.
Reports
The Annual Design History Society conference took place between 8 and 10 September at Middlesex University in London. It was followed by The International Conference on Design History and Design Studies organised in Taipei just a few weeks later. The temporal proximity of both events poses a question about the very nature of design history–its fragmentation into global, national or regional variants. Consequently, it makes us ponder a possibility of having a fruitful conversation between scholars dealing with those different design histories. It echoes an important question raised by Penny Sparke in her review of a recent conference in Paris and published on the blog earlier this year: Where is the History of Design Going?
Reports
Cabin Fever is an exhibition that documents the historical evolution of the cabin in North America — and, as a counterpoint, in Scandinavia — from the 1800s to present, with a particular emphasis on visual and material representation. The cabin is explored through four main themes: pragmatism; romanticism; the counter-culture...
Reports
Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the ‘Artisans and the Craft Economy in Scotland, c.1780 – 1914’ project investigates the world of artisans and craft in Scotland, demonstrating that the craft economy was not destroyed by industrialisation, but rather it adapted and changed.
Reports
My research aims to investigate the role played by typewriters for Indian languages in absorbing and shaping the aspirations of the independent nation-state of India following British colonial rule. In particular, my research intends to analyse the ramifications of the ‘swadesi’ doctrine within the context of modernisation, technological innovation, and the quest for self-sufficiency in the decades following Indian independence...
Reports
Where do you import products from, if you have little or no native design industry or manufacturing? How do they differ from the products designed for the home market, and how are they advertised and promoted? These are questions that I have been considering in relation to domestic electric products sold in Ireland during the 1950s and 1960s, where the tiny native product manufacturing sector was dwarfed by the range and breadth of products imported from outside the State...
ReportsCategories
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