About

I have been Professor of Design History and Theory and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries at University of Portsmouth since 2016. I was previously Associate Professor of History and Theory of Design and Head of Histories and Theories in the Fashion and Textiles Institute at Falmouth University. I started my career as a curator at the V&A Museum in 1987 and curated ‘Ideal Homes’ for the Design Museum in 1993. I went on to lecture at University of Wolverhampton, University of East London, University of Ulster and Loughborough University, joining Falmouth University in 2007. I have also held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in Cultural and Historical Geography at Royal Holloway. I was academic convener of ‘The Politics of Design’, the Design History Society annual conference, University of Ulster, 2004. I was a member of the editorial board of The Journal of Design History from 2004-2010. I am a member of the AHRC’s Peer Review College.

My research is on the experience of modernity in the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on design and visual culture, spectacle, space, performance and communities. I am currently working on Kitchen for Reaktion’s Objekt series. My monograph Ideal Homes, 1918-39: Domestic Design and Suburban Modernism was published by Manchester University Press in 2018. I was awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to support this research in 2012-13, for which I also undertook a programme of knowledge exchange activities with Media 10 Limited, owners of the Ideal Home Show.

I have published several articles on the revival of historical pageants and spectacle in Britain, the US and the British Empire in the twentieth century, mainly focusing on the work of pageant master Frank Lascelles. My most recent paper on this subject ‘Spectacle, the Public and the Crowd: Pageants and Exhibitions in 1908’ is in The Edwardian Sense: Art, Design and Spectacle in Britain, 1901-1910, eds. M. Hatt & M. O’Neill, Yale University Press, 2010. I am currently developing a research project on vintage brands, events and subcultures.