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As the Design History Society continues to grow in membership and influence, the Board has appointed two Ambassadors with the aim of promoting the Society as a site of conversation, debate and reflection on design history. The Ambassadors will be utilising Twitter, Instagram and the DHS Blog to keep our members up to date with events and dialogues in the field.
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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...
ReportsMy conference paper Design and the Notion of Contemporary Heterotopia presented an original, interdisciplinary research, which joined the field of design history with political theory and philosophy. My research combined the historical method and hermeneutics in order to critically challenge the understanding of how design shapes our world...
Reports
With the support of the Design History Society Student Travel Award, I recently went on a journey in search of surviving jewellery artefacts made in Scotland during the nineteenth century. My PhD research explores the jewellery craft in Scotland from 1780 to 1914, tracing the transformation of raw materials in the landscape to finished objects worn on the body. The study draws on surviving artefacts to understand how Scotland’s jewellery craft evolved during a time of profound economic, social and cultural change, with a focus on the shifting intersections between design and workmanship.
Reports
My project seeks to explore what can be learned by viewing and interpreting the cataclysmic social and political upheavals that have taken place in the American South during the period through a study of rhinestone tailoring, a style of performance dress and design closely associated with country music. The style juxtaposes the construction values of bespoke tailoring with bright colours, pictorial embroidery, sparkling rhinestones and the styling of the American West.
ReportsThe generous Design History Society Day Symposium Award enabled the symposium Transnational Textiles: New Directions to take place at Northumbria University in November. The Symposium brought together academics, students, practitioners and museum professionals based in the UK and Scandinavia to share their interest in transnational textiles.
DHS EventsGoing for a walk can have unexpected consequences. One snow-covered winter’s day in January 2013 I set off with a friend to trace the hidden underground course of the River Fleet in London by walking the streets above. As we approached the end of the walk...
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