DHS at the ICDHS conference in Aveiro, 8-11 July 2014

4 January 2015 -

As the Membership and Outreach Officer, I represented the DHS at the biennial ICDHS conference, held in Aveiro in July 2014. The Society was invited to participate in a lively roundtable discussion co-organised by Kjetil Fallan, Anna Calvera and Helena Barbosa on 'The European Province: National approaches and wider issues relating to the global provinces.'

The roundtable was held the day before the conference start, and was meant to set the tone for this year's topic on 'Tradition, Transition, Trajectories: major or minor influences,' which focussed on the global and local in design history and design studies. The event provided a unique opportunity for representatives from all the major international design history societies to discuss the aims and activities of their respective organisations. The roundtable followed a workshop that addressed specific case studies of 'The European Province' (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom), and involved the following participants:

Tevfik Balcioglu (Founding President of the Turkish Design History Society)
Anna Calvera (Vice-President of the Fundació Història del Disseny, Barcelona)
Haruhiko Fujita (President of the Japan Society of Design)
Anders V. Munch (Nordic Forum of Design History)
Vanni Pasca (Chairman of AIS/Design – Associazione Italiana degli Storici del Design)
Sabrina Rahman (Membership and Outreach Officer, Design History Society)

Each representative gave a 10-minute presentation on the history, aims and current state of their society; I was asked me to open the discussion as the DHS is the 'most international of the societies.' In my talk I emphasised the fact that, since its founding, the DHS has endeavoured to support inclusive design histories. We are dedicated to maintaining an international membership base, and one that reflects the wider constituency of design history practitioners – in addition to university academics working in the field, we also encourage students, independent researchers, educators, designers, designer-makers, critics, and curators to participate in our activities. I spoke about our research grants and awards, highlighted that the Journal of Design History is the leading journal in the field and decidedly international in scope, and discussed how since 2005 our conferences have been increasingly oriented towards global design histories and wider geographies.

Several presentations revealed the precarious state of the field. Anders Munch from the Nordic Forum of Design History charted the decline of the Scandinavian Journal of Design History, which ran from 1991 until 2005. Similarly, Haruhiko Fujita talked about how the Journal of the Japan Society of Design began in 1959 and sadly ceased publication in 2009. However, he did announce that the Encyclopedia of Asian Design will be published in 2016, which suggests a demand for wider knowledge of the subject. This is also made evident by the Journal of Design History's forthcoming issue on design in East Asia, as well as by the dynamic activities of the Design History Workshop Japan (not in attendance). Founded in 2002, the DHWJ publishes the journal Design History, and supports a wide range of events to promote intellectual and cultural exchange both within Japan and internationally. Vanni Pasca posited the dilemma of opening up the history of Italian design to international historians, and Anna Calvera emphasised the need for Spanish design history to engage with the colonial legacy, and to connect with work being done in Latin America. The Turkish Design History Society revealed itself to be a thriving organisation, although founder Tevfik Balcioglu did highlight the specific intellectual and culture challenges of doing design history in Turkey.

A major outcome from thisroundtable was the realisation that collaboration among these societies is crucial, both to their survival and to the promotion of design history as a recognised field of study around the world. Also striking is the need to address the local challenges of teaching and researching design history in various cultural and geographical contexts. The DHS Day Symposium would be an excellent forum for these debates to take place, and to plant the seeds for future collaboration. Members from around the world are encouraged to apply to the DHS for a small grant to host a symposium on any aspect of design history at the institution of their choice, or at the DHS premises in central London.