The Executive Committee is elected every three years at the Society's Annual General Meeting, usually held during the Society's annual conference. The voluntary Executive Committee form the Society's Board of Trustees, and work together to promote and support professional, scholarly work in design history. The Executive Committee invites and welcomes those interested in becoming more involved with the Society to consider joining the Executive Committee. Queries of interest can directed to the DHS Administrator, Jenna Allsopp at designhistorysociety@gmail.com
DHS Trustees must exercise compliance, prudence and duty of care:
- Ensuring that the DHS complies with charity law, and with the requirements of the Charity Commission as regulator; in particular ensuring that the DHS prepares reports on what it has achieved and Annual Returns and accounts as required by law
- Ensuring that the DHS adheres to the requirements set out in its constitution and that it remains true to the charitable purpose and objects set out there.
- Complying with the requirements of other legislation and other regulators (as appropriate), which govern the activities of the DHS.
- Acting with integrity, avoiding any personal conflicts of interest or misuse of DHS funds or assets.
- Ensuring that the DHS is and will remain solvent, using its funds reasonably, and only in furtherance of DHS objectives; avoiding activities that might place the DHS’s funds and reputation at undue risk, and seeking professional advice on all matters where there may be material risk to the DHS, or where the Trustees or other committee members may be in breach of their duties.
Chair of the Design History Society: Sally-Anne Huxtable
Dr Sally-Anne Huxtable is Associate Professor at London Metropolitan University. Sally was previously Head Curator of the National Trust since and is an Honorary Fellow in History of Art at the University of York. Sally is a Co-editor of the Manchester University Press Studies in Design and Material Culture series, and she sits on the advisory board of the Stained Glass Museum. As Chair of the DHS, Sally is an Ex Officio member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Design History and acts as Editor of the Archives, Collections & Curatorship section of the Journal. Sally’s expertise focuses on nineteenth and early twentieth century art, design, and history, and she has a particular interest in the relationship between artistic movements and practice and spiritual and religious belief.
Chair of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Design History: Grace Lees-Maffei
Professor Dr Grace Lees-Maffei MA (RCA) has been a member of the DHs since 1998. She served as Treasurer from 1998-2001 and Event Award Coordinator 2001-2 before joining the Journal of Design History Editorial Board in 2002 as Reviews Editor and Editor (2002-8), Managing Editor (2012-17) and, since 2021 she is Chair of the Editorial Board. Grace is Full Professor of Design History and Programme Director for DHeritage, the Professional Doctorate in Heritage, at the University of Hertfordshire (UK). She is a Full Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Historical Society and AdvanceHE and since 2012, she has been a member of the Peer Review College of the AHRC. Grace researches mediation, heritage, national identity and globalization in design. Grace and Kjetil Fallan (JDH Editorial Board member) are founding Editors of Cultural Histories of Design, a book series published by Bloomsbury.
Treasurer: Jo Pilcher
Dr Jo Pilcher is a Senior Lecturer in Historical, Critical and Cultural Studies on 3D Design & Craft and Illustration degrees at University of Brighton. Her research focuses on dynamics between makers in marginalised communities, considering what they made and how they and their work relates to the wider neo-colonial power structures they experience. Her research interests include embodied experience in both making and using objects.
Digital Secretary: Anna K. Talley
Anna Talley is a design historian and researcher focusing on modern and contemporary material culture, particularly product, digital and communication design. Anna is currently undertaking her doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh, funded by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities/ UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. She holds a BFA in Art and Design History from the Pratt Institute and an MA from the V&A/Royal College of Art in Design History and Material Culture. Anna was a co-founder of Design in Quarantine, a digital archive of design responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was awarded the Design History Society’s 2020 Virtual Design History Student Award and received international press coverage. As a freelance writer, Anna’s work has been published in Design Observer, AIGA’s Eye On Design, the New York Review of Architecture, AN Interior, WHITEHOT Magazine, MODERN Magazine, and The Magazine ANTIQUES. Anna also has experience working with cultural heritage institutions in the US and UK, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Outreach and Membership Officer: Yasmine Nachabe Taan
Dr Yasmine Nachabe Taan is Associate Professor of Art and Design History at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. She holds a PhD in Art History and Communication Studies from McGill University. Her interdisciplinary research cuts across the fields of visual culture, gender politics, photography and design history with a focus on Lebanon and the Middle East. Yasmine is on the advisory board for the journal Design & Culture.
Communications Officer: Alex Banister
Alex Banister is currently completing her PhD at Oxford Brookes University. Her research thesis, Designing the Domestic: Women’s Writing on Architecture and Design in Interwar Britain, examines women’s voices in the shaping of modernity. Alexandra completed her MA in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art and her BA in History of Art at University College London. Alex currently works for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and has previously held roles at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Barbican Centre, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Within academic and public practice, Alexandra is particularly interested in uncovering hidden histories, questioning visibility and omissions in the writing of history, and rethinking architectural history from a feminist perspective.
Grants and Prizes Officer: Elli Michaela Young
Dr Elli Michaela Young is an independent curator, cultural programmer, researcher, and teacher. Her PhD thesis which investigated how fashion and textiles were used in the construction of Jamaican identities during a period of transition from colony to independence (1950-1970). She has a BA in Design from London Metropolitan University and an MA in Postcolonial Cultures and Global Policy from Goldsmiths College. She has lectured at a number of UK universities and designed the University of Brighton’s first African Diaspora Fashion Module. She is currently a lecturer in Fashion and Visual Cultures at Middlesex University and the Grants and Awards Officer for the Design History Society and co-founder of the Caribbean Fashion and Design Research Network (CFDRN).
Teaching and Learning Officer: Deepika Srivastava
Deepika is an Ahmedabad-based design historian with 4+ years of experience across crafts, museums, and contemporary design and architecture. Her degrees are in Interior Design (bachelor's from CEPT University, Ahmedabad), and History of Design (MA from The Royal College of Art, London). She is currently working as an Independent Consultant with the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, on crafts sector and curatorial projects and has also been Visiting Faculty in teaching design history courses across departments at NID and other universities as well. Some of her research interests as a design historian are: mediation of interior design in post-liberalised India and social and collaborative nature of architectural production. She has presented her research at a seminar of the Design History Society and most recently at the What Futures for Design History? conference organised by the Italian Association of Design Historians in Politecnico di Milano. She is also developing a column, 'Looking beyond the architect' for an Indian media publication, ArchitectureLive!, where she will be profiling architecture practices across India to further probe this aspect of collaboration.
Conference Liaison Officer: Jessica Jenkins
Dr Jessica Jenkins is a design historian and lecturer on graphic design and illustration at Falmouth University. She is qualified as a Graphic Designer with a First Class BA Hons, (Bath College of Higher Education 1989) and a PhD in Design History (Royal College of Art, London, 2015).
Student Officer (non-Trustee role): Alex Todd
Alex J. Todd is a design historian and educator. His research is broadly concerned with design’s potential as a method of political and cultural opposition, with a particular focus on the post-1960s Netherlands. Currently, Alex is a PhD student in the School of Humanities at the University of Brighton, where he is researching the politics of identity through the work of Dutch graphic design collective Wild Plakken. He also teaches in the History of Art and Design department at Pratt Institute in New York.
Ambassador (non-Trustee role): Dan Mu
Dan is a current PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh. Her research specialises in design culture and the designer’s identity, endeavouring to chronicle the emergence and growth of independent design in China, whilst bridging a critical gap in the contemporary design history narrative. Dan’s PhD research uses product design as a lens through which to gain insight into the entanglements generated by China's cultural-political-economic identities. Prior to starting her PhD journey, Dan worked as an industrial designer at a Beijing-based FMCG company. In 2021, she graduated from the MA Expanded Practice program (innovation and service studio) at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she specialised in service design and speculative design. In 2019, she earned her Bachelor's Degree in Furniture Design and Engineering from Beijing Forestry University, with a focus on Emotive Design and Parametric Design.
Ambassador (non-Trustee role): Pippy Stephenson
Pippy Stephenson is an MA History of Design and Material Culture student at the University of Brighton. Her research looks at utopianism, new towns and other aspects of 20th century architectural and urban design history. She recently assisted on a project funded by the QAA into how university staff are supported to undertake student partnership projects. She has a BA Fine Art degree from Chelsea College of Art.
Senior Administrator (paid employee): Jenna Allsopp-Douglas
Dr Jenna Allsopp-Douglas has been the Administrator of the DHS since January 2020 and Senior Administrator since 2023. She holds a BA in Fashion and Dress History, an MA in the History of Design and Material Culture, and a PhD is visual culture, all completed at the University of Brighton. Her PhD thesis explored amateur filmmaking as a practice of neuroqueer refusal at the intersection of queer learning disability. Her BA dissertation was awarded the 2014 DHS Undergraduate Student Essay Prize. She has previously lectured at Northumbria University, University of Brighton and Bath Spa University. Jenna is also Administrator of the journal Critical Social Policy and Trustee of the Young Women's Film Academy.