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




    Sam Gathercole
    Historical Artefacts, Time Machines and the Strange Objects of Science Fiction


    My research regularly returns to post-war British art and architecture. I am currently researching a site-specific (and ‘time-specific’) artwork made as part of a new hospital extension in Belfast in the 1950s. In conjunction with what is a conventional art history and/or architectural history research, I am introducing terms and ideas from science fiction and speculative fiction. The idea is to conduct some playful trans-disciplinary experiments that might produce something like a ‘speculative history’. I am interested in cultural histories, art histories and design histories that explore or highlight alternative or abandoned timelines; histories that open onto potential spaces of the imagination and, through that, open-up a chance of new ways of thinking and understanding. 

    Cultural artefacts can be understood as time machines; as devices through which one moment might potentially be visited by another. This is not to simply say that it is through such objects that we might visit the past. For Mary Martin (who designed the Belfast hospital artwork I have been thinking about), “Works of art are not memories, temporal like a performance. They are physical, material presences meant to be handled, gazed upon and lived with.” In such thinking, time dissolves in the forever-present materiality of the artefact: the work—outside of its representation in art and design histories—is experienced in real time and real space. That said, time and space can be fundamentally disrupted by the introduction of an artwork (as commonly happens with many of the strange objects of science fiction), and changing conditions then act back onto the artefact. Such forces are what art/design history might study.

    This presentation will reflect on an experimental work in progress, with an eye to prompting discussion about the work of art/design history.



    — Sam Gathercole


    Sam Gathercole is a senior lecturer in Contextual and Theoretical Studies in the Design School at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He has published widely on post-war British constructivist art. Recent work includes ‘The Expressive Unit of Constructionism: Kenneth Martin at Whittington Hospital’ (British Art Studies, Issue 24, 2023) and ‘The Lost Cause of British Constructionism: A Two-Act Tragedy’ (British Art Studies, Issue 18, 2020).