Symposium The Design of History and the History of Design


London College of Communication
15 September, 2025



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SpeakerS and Abstracts:

Huda Almazroua
Alberto Atalla Filho
Russ Bestley
Kevin Biderman
Silvia Bombardini
David Cross
Dora Souza Dias
Sam Gathercole
Ian Horton and Ian Hague
Jennifer Hankin
Zarna Hart
John-Patrick Hartnett
Fenella Hitchcock
Abbie Vickress and Sakis Kyratzis
Christopher Lacy
Timothy Miller
Danah Nassief
Jesse O’Neill
Nina O’Reilly
Patrick O’Shea
David Preston
Cheryl Roberts
Rebecca Ross
Antoin Sharkey
Andrew Slatter
Kate Trant
Vanessa Vanden Berghe
Judy Willcocks
Christin Yu



A symposium for UAL’s Design History research community


The Design of History and the History of Design is a one-day symposium that maps research into, through or at the boundaries of design history at UAL. While design history may underpin our teaching across different disciplines, research in design history across UAL is somewhat hidden. This symposium aims to share and make visible the work of researchers (staff and students) at all career stages across all UAL colleges.

Exploring the intersections of historical narrative and design practice, it examines how history is constructed, represented, and mediated through design, and how the discipline of design itself is shaped by its evolving historiography.

The symposium will serve as the starting point for a Design History Network at UAL, bringing together researchers from across the university. It also lays the foundation for a welcoming research community in design history, with potential for ongoing events, collaboration, publications, and curriculum development.

If you have any questions or would like to be involved in future activities, please get in touch with the convenors:

Rujana Rebernjak
r.rebernjak@lcc.arts.ac.ukTai Cossich
t.cossich@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Please also sign up for the UAL Design Histories Newsletter




    Jennifer Hankin
    Moonbeams, Bio-Flight and Biospheres: Interdisciplinary Ecologies and the Emergence of Cyclical Knowledge


    Interdisciplinary projects produced by Jason deCaires Taylor, Katie Paterson and Tomás Saraceno, have signalled new points at which networks of design, utopianism, and ecologism meet. In early works dating back to 2006, Taylor, an artist working with marine biology, engineered oceanic biospheres to counter existing environmental depletion, whereas in 2015, Saraceno worked with biologists to create record breaking moss-powered balloon flights. In 2017, Paterson worked with NASA to engineer audio feedback loops bounced from the surface of the moon, whilst her ongoing project The Future Library (2014 – 2114), is currently engaging writers to work on projects which extend past human lifetimes. These highly innovative cooperations counter linear models of design, as cyclical models of design thinking are tested and actualised through a symbiotic relationship with nature, matter, and non-human entities.

    In this paper, I focus on the emergence of ‘circulatory’ models of design and the potential applications of cyclical thinking. As contribution to this emerging field of thought, my work discusses projects which operate in conjunction with other ecological life cycles, the looping of, and benefits of alternative knowledge exchanges, and concepts of ecological fusion in which species operate, imitate, and gain information from other organisms. 

    Building on concepts of hybridised ecologism and speculative design, this research highlights the potentiality of shifting design precepts towards non-human models of operation, and questions how contemporary hybrid ecologies are transforming design histories.



    — Jennifer Hankin


    Jennifer Hankin is an early career researcher and writer who is fascinated by the possibilities of utopian thinking. She is an associate lecturer at University of the Arts London and has interests in the post-colonial imagination and how art functions within complex ecologies. Hankin has presented research on utopian models of thinking at The University of Vienna, The University of Chicago, Warwick University, and Cambridge University. Recent publications include ‘Shock, Tension, Offense and Satire in Utopian Contemporary Art’ (2023) and ‘Disorder and Dissonance: The Architectural and Utopian Ecologies of Sarah Sze’ (2025).