Design + History

The Design + History Group encompasses a wide range of historical research into past and present design cultures. We have significant depth in the following areas: fashion history and theory including Indigenous Australian and Japanese fashion; critical histories of technology, labour & material culture; and critical luxury studies. We investigate the wider social, cultural, affective and environmental impacts of design and welcome all graduate proposals in any field of Design History.

STREAM LEADERS Distinguished Professor Peter McNeil FAHA & Dr Jesse Adams-Stein

Based in UTS Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, researchers in this Group include Dr Treena Clark (UTS CPIDRF), Distinguished Professor Peter McNeil, Dr Jesse Adams Stein (ARC DECRA Fellow) and Associate Professor Toby Slade. Our Adjunct Fellows include Dr Emily Brayshaw and Dr Jonathan Kaplan. Our research is cross-disciplinary, engaged with diverse communities and with Australian policy debates. We have significant engagement with wider publics through press, radio, podcasting and television, as well as formal and informal roles in art galleries, museums, libraries and collecting institutions.

Research outline

Design + History encompasses both traditional and practice-led research methods and approaches, including archival, other collections, visual, material and theoretically-informed cultural histories, oral history, business and economic histories, object biographies and literary criticism.

Within this node we conduct research on key areas of design including:

• Fashion Studies including long histories of dress, the fashion system, textile cultures and urbanism
• Fashion Studies including long histories of dress, the fashion system, textile cultures and urbanism
• Critical Luxury Studies, critical histories of production-mediated consumption
• Gender + design; Queer design 
• Cultural biographies of things
• Decolonising design and Indigenous design knowledge & practice
• Global perspectives on design, manufacturing & trade
• Critical histories of technology, labour & material culture
• Histories of craft, technical skill and design education
• Environmental histories of design
• Furniture, Interior, and other product design histories
• Historical and contemporary research on sustainable materials, repair, maintenance and design for a decarbonised future

Within the group, Distinguished Professor Peter McNeil FAHA, leads the Imagining Fashion Futures Research Lab, with a 10+ year history and 25+ PhD and Masters graduates. Unique in Australia for its emphasis on experimental dress history, its PhD topics include: clothing politics and pregnancy; Viennese men’s dress politics prior to Annexation (1938); wearable tech as fashion, software and performance; fashion and performance costume; Japanese fashion, youth and popular culture; and contemporary ecological ‘drag’;

Available research programs include the Master of Design (Research) and a PhD (Design). Design + History researchers are also closely engaged with the undergraduate design curriculum through the Design Studies unit.