Routes to Design History: Episode 13 - Jesse Adams Stein

24 June, 2026

In the next episode of our new podcast series: Routes to Design History, we speak with Dr Jesse Adams Stein, Director of Design Studies at UTS School of Design. An interdisciplinary design researcher, her work investigates often-overlooked aspects of design: labour, industrial craft, skill, repair, and industries in transition, across both historical and contemporary contexts.

Stein is the author of Hot Metal: Material Culture and Tangible Labour (Manchester UP, 2016) and Industrial Craft in Australia (Palgrave, 2021), and co-editor of two recent Routledge collections on design, labour, and planetary breakdown (2025).

Her current research focuses on the role of installers as key communicators in NSW's energy transition, and examining the history and politics of high-visibility workwear. She is also a long-standing advocate for the right to repair, skilled trades, and industry policy reform, and co-initiated the UTS Repair-Design project in 2019.

Active in Australia's public history sector, Stein serves on the History Council of NSW and has collaborated with institutions including Museums Victoria, the Powerhouse, and the National Library of Australia on oral history projects documenting Australian manufacturing, including Reshaping Australian Manufacturing (2017–2019) and Makers, Manufacturers & Designers (2021–2023).

Listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/

Developed by our Teaching and Learning Officer Deepika Srivastava, our Student Officer Alex Todd, and former Ambassadors Dan Mu and Pippy Stephenson, the Routes to Design History podcast series explores diverse ways of practising the field. Join us as we uncover the many routes to shaping a career in design history.