Design + History invite PhD candidates who are looking to undertake research into any aspect of design culture. Recent research candidates include designers, curators, cultural workers, polemicists and performers. Current international research collaborations include Aalto University Finland, Warwick University UK, the University System of Taiwan, National Palace Museum, National Yang-Ming University Taipei, and the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Our research is supported by a €1 million grant from The Academy of Finland (McNeil’s FiDiPro), the National Library of Australia (Stein) and Workshop Grant from The Australian Academy of the Humanities (McNeil 2018).
Completed PhD Projects, indicating scope, range and nature of research:
- Jonathan C. Kaplan, Kleider machen Leute: Jewish Men and Dress Politics in Vienna, 1890–1938 (PhD under examination 2019)
- Patricia B. Hanlon, Dress in Australia’s Eighteenth Century (Masters, 2019)
- Virginia Wright, A Quintessential Global Product: Bentwood Furniture in Canada and Australia 1860 to 1945 (PhD 2017)
- Leong Koon Chan, Graphic Design and the Visualisation of Multi-racialism for Nation Building in Singapore, 1965-2009 (PhD 2016)
- Yanqing Zhang, Tech Fashion: Fashion Institutionalisation in Digital Technology (second supervisor with Oskar Juhlin), Stockholm University (PhD 2016)
- Emily Brayshaw, Costuming the Feathered Showgirl: trans-Atlantic fashion and primitivism, c1890-1930 (PhD 2016); 3 Minute Thesis finalist, 2013
- Jesse Adams Stein, Precarious Printers: Labour, technology & material culture at the NSW Government Printing Office 1959–1989 (PhD 2014); UTS Chancellor’s List for Top 6 PhDs at UTS 2015, author, Hot Metal; UTS Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Research Fellow from 2016
- Christian Tietz, The Secret Life of Stoves – Health in Remote Australian Indigenous Communities (PhD 2014); Winner UTS Human Rights Award 2012. Finalist, 3 Minute Thesis.
- Masafumi Monden, Refashioning the Romantics: Contemporary Japanese Culture Aspects of Dress (PhD 2012); Japan Foundation and National Library of Australia Fellow, 2017. Author, Japanese Fashion Cultures Dress and Gender in Contemporary Japan (Bloomsbury Academic 2014)
- Elizabeth/Biz Heyman, Dress & disability: identifications and interpretations (PhD 2013)
- Suzanne Osmond, The Nexus Between Stage Costume and Fashion (PhD co-supervision, 2013)
- K Alexander Su, A history of dress and the 'New Negro' of Chicago, c.1890-1915 (PhD 2012)
- Louise Fanning, Costuming Cleopatra : costume and the representation of race, gender, and identity in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (2013)
- Jacqueline Lorber-Kasunic, Receding visions of pastoral idyll: an ethnographic and photographic study of marginal farming in the Maranoa (PhD 2011)
- Liisa Naar, Design Patronage (PhD 2010). UTS Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Research Fellow 2011-2015, co-editor, Gehry in Sydney (Images Publishing 2015).
- Melissa Laird, Remnant and reliquary : fragmentary traces reconciled as object and knowledge. Reading and registering the artefact through material culture research and the lives of women, Australia 1788-1901 (PhD 2009)
Current PhD Candidates (as at March 2019):
- Geoff Isaac, Plastic Chairs: Design and Ecology; (author of Featherston)
- Catriona Fisk, Confined by History: Dress and Pregnancy 1750-1900; Finalist, 3 Minute Thesis Competition 2017.
- Danièle Hromek, The Re-Indigenisation of Space
- Michael McDaniel, The re-emergence of possums skin cloak (badhang galang wilay) making as a cultural practice and movement amongst Aboriginal Peoples of South-East Australia
- Enya Moore, Transcending boundaries: The design festival as a transnational entity
- Alex Murray Leslie (Co-founder, Chicks on Speed), Wearable tech in music and fashion
- Tracey Sernack-Chee Quee, Claudio Alcorso and Post-War Textile Design in Australia
- Thomas Stoddard, Making Explicit Queer Ontologies in Visual Communication Design