Awards

The Design History Society is committed to supporting the development of research in the field of design history. The Society offers four annual research grants spread throughout the year and aimed at supporting a variety of research activities, aims and outputs. Together the grants are available to a mixture of members and non-members and have been conceived to encourage innovative and inclusive definitions of design history and its methods and approaches.

The Accessible Design History Grant has been created to remove structural barriers that prevent disabled researchers, students, and practitioners from engaging fully with the field of design history.

This award has been created to recognise and support ground-breaking research and projects that actively contribute to the decolonisation of design history. We especially encourage applications from researchers and students from the Global Majority, those who are first-generation university entrants, those with disabilities and other marginalised communities and those whose work foregrounds, diverse perspectives and under-represented narratives within design history.

The Student Essay Prize will not be running in 2025 and will revamped for 2026 to align with the newly-launched annual DHS virtual student conference

The Design History Society has a bursary fund to assist DHS Student and precariously-employed members whose papers have been accepted for presentation at our annual conference. The Society endeavours to provide bursaries for up to 5 DHS student and precariously-employed members presenting at the Annual Conference. Each bursary includes the DHS member early bird delegate fee, attendance at the gala dinner and up to £200 towards travel and accommodation costs.

To invigorate and celebrate the art of design discourse, the DHS is proud to launch the 2025 iteration of the Design Writing Prize.