Associate members
Dr Leah Armstrong
Leah Armstrong is FWF Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She joined the department of Design History and Theory as Senior Lecturer in 2015, having previously held research and teaching positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) London, the Glasgow School of Art and the Centre for Design History at the University of Brighton. Her research focuses on professionalisation and its discontents: design, 1930-1980.
Professor Jeremy Aynsley
Jeremy Aynsley researches late-nineteenth and twentieth-century design in Europe and the United States, with a particular focus on design in modern Germany. He is especially interested in the phenomenon of the migration of Modernism, avant-garde and commercial visual languages in graphic design, as well as the education and professionalisation of the designer. His major publications include Graphic Design in Germany, 1890-1945 (2000) and Designing Modern Germany (2008).
Professor Rebecca M Brown
Rebecca M. Brown is Professor and Chair of the Department of the History of Art and Chair of the Advanced Academic Programs in Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage Management at Johns Hopkins University. Brown’s research engages in the history of art, architecture, and visual culture of South Asia from the late eighteenth century to the present. She was a Global Fellow at the University of Brighton in 2023, working on visualisations of the archive, museum and fileroom.
Dr Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan
Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan is Associate Professor at the School of Design, Ambedkar University, Delhi, India. Her research interests centre on nineteenth- and twentieth-century craft and design in the Indian subcontinent from historical and sociological perspectives. She was a Visiting Research Fellow with the Centre for Design History in June 2022.
Professor Alison Clarke
Alison J. Clarke is Professor and Head of Department, Design History and Theory, at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She is Director of the Papanek Foundation. Clarke’s approach uniquely combines historical and anthropological methodology, placing her work at the forefront of design anthropology research, and of early debates within material culture, design and consumption studies.
Professor Clive Dilnot
Clive Dilnot is Professor of Design Studies at Parsons the New School for Design, New York. His publications include Design and the Question of History (Bloomsbury 2014) and A John Heskett Reader (Bloomsbury 2016).
Professor Dennis Doordan
Dennis Doordan is editor of leading journal Design Issues, and Emeritus Professor at University of Notre Dame, Indiana. His seminal texts include Twentieth-Century Architecture (H.N. Abrams, 2002).
Professor Priscila Farias
Priscila Farias is an Associate Professor at the University of São Paulo School of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU USP), and a Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development research fellow. The focus of her research is typography and lettering. Her current investigations address the status of typography and lettering as cultural heritage. She has published and lectured widely, and acted as a visiting scholar at University of the Arts London, Università IUAV di Venezia and at the Centre for Design History, University of Brighton.
Professor Rupali Gupte
Rupali Gupte is an architect, urbanist and artist based in Mumbai. She is one of the founder members of the School of Environment and Architecture as well as director for the institute. Much of her practice involves extensive research on contemporary South Asian urbanism with a focus on architecture and the built environment; tactical practices; housing; and urban form and has worked with the Design Archives at the Centre for Design History.
Professor Deniz Hasirci
Deniz Hasirici is Professor of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design at Izmir University, Turkey. Her research fields include history of interior design, modern interior design, Turkish modern furniture, and environment-behavior studies. She has given several lectures on history of modern interiors in Turkey and Turkish modern furniture at universities and conferences including at the Centre for Design History.
Professor Izumi Kuroishi
Izumi Kuroishi is Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan. Her research interests include phenomenological urban fieldwork, modern housing and material culture in architecture. She conducts projects in Tokyo on the subjects of disaster in the urban landscape, food culture, ways of living, and memory and photographs. Published books include External Ideas of Architecture: Works and Ideas of Wajiro Kon (2000), Constructing the Colonized Land (2014), and Earthquake Recovery in the Northern Part of Japan and Wajiro Kon: Knowledge of Domestic Works and Living (2015).
Dr Helen Mears
Helen Mears is Head of Curatorship and Research at Royal Museums, Greenwich. Previously she held the role of Keeper of World Art at Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton and Hove. Her research interests are in the intersections between contemporary diaspora communities and colonial-era museum collections, participatory practice and decolonial agendas. She was a founding member of the Centre for Design History’s ‘Museums, Archives, Exhibitions’ research strand, and has served on its Management Board.
Joana Meroz
Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz is Assistant Professor in Design Cultures at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. She has published widely on Dutch design and transnational networks, and is an editorial board member of Stedelijk Studies Journal.
Dr Katarina Serulus
Katarina Serulus studied art history and design cultures at the KU Leuven and the VU Amsterdam. In 2016 she defended at the University of Antwerp her PhD thesis entitled 'Design & Politics: The Public Promotion of Industrial Design in Postwar Belgium (1950-1986)', which was published in 2018 by the Leuven University Press. Her research interests include national discourses, gender, transnational networks, club culture and non-disciplinary practices in the field of design, architecture and visual culture. She was an Associate Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2020-2021) and project manager at the Flanders Architecture Institute in Antwerp (2017-2023) where she was responsible for the policy on design archives and initiated the project Wiki Women Design (2020).
Professor Lou Taylor
Lou Taylor is Professor Emeritus at the University of Brighton. She is a dress historian who has played a vital developmental role in establishing the discipline. Her seminal texts include The Study of Dress History and Establishing Dress History (Manchester University Press, 2002 and 2004). With Marie Mcloughlin, she co-edited Paris Fashion and World War Two: Global Diffusion and Nazi Control (Bloomsbury Press, 2019).
Professor Jonathan M Woodham
Jonathan Woodham is Professor Emeritus in History of Design at the University of Brighton. He also serves on the editorial boards of Design Issues, MIT, and the Journal of Design History (OUP). His seminal texts include A Dictionary of Modern Design (Oxford UP, 2004), and Twentieth Century Design (Oxford UP, 1997).
Professor Yasuko Suga-Ida
Yasuko Suga-Ida is a Professor at Tsuda University in the Department of English, Japan. Her research interests focus on British and Japanese design history and material culture in the 19th and 20th century. Her books include Kinkarakami: the Art of Japanese Leather Paper (2010) and Reimann School: a Design Diaspora (2014). Recently she has published articles and chapters on craft and gender, a ‘bonsai’ village in Japan, Japanese tea culture, and prison-made furniture in Japan.
Dora Souza Dias
Dora Souza Dias is a design historian and graphic designer interested in expanding the field of graphic design practice and history, so it becomes more inclusive and considerate of all kinds of narratives and histories. Her research focuses on transnational design networks, particularly professional ones, as well as on the challenges of social, cultural and linguistic interactions within graphic design practice. She has worked closely with the Centre for Design History, Expanding Graphic Design Histories.
Yun Wang
Yun Wang received her PhD from the Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal College of Art joint programme in History of Design in 2020. She received her BA and her MA from The Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University. She has working experience in the international design field for many years, which includes being a member of the Chinese Organisation Committee, AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) Beijing Conference; the project coordinator of AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Art) China and The First Beijing International Design Triennial; coordinator of the Chinese chapter of the Meggs History of Graphic Design and the school journal of The Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University. She has been International Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Design History, University of Brighton since 2022.