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




    Silvia Bombardini
    Designed Not To Be Seen: Hidden Histories of Victorian Shoplifters’ Clothes


    This presentation explores the phenomenon that, at the turn of the 20th century, comes to be known as a ‘kleptomania epidemic’, affecting women for the most part and spreading rapidly across the newly opened department stores of the United Kingdom and the United States. Anglophone newspapers describe in detail the sartorial technologies shoplifters wear to steal—at least those worn by the shoplifters who get caught—and many of these bear remarkable similarities with clothing inventions patented in both countries at around the same time. For example, a shoplifter’s skirt that is double lined to become a pocket as deep as the wearer’s leg (North Bucks Times and County Observer 1911, p.7), recalls in its description that of a patented petticoat in which the wearer’s outer skirt can be inserted to prevent it getting wet when it rains (Sittig 1908, US877672A). Patented technologies earn their place in the history of design through technical drawings, references to previous inventions, and the payment of a fee. On the other hand, my presentation posits shoplifting inventions as “subjugated knowledges” (Gamman 1999, e.g. 8, 68), that circulate via word of mouth and thrive on secrecy. These designs fulfil their purpose only up until the moment when they appear in official archives—and the most successful among them are likely to be those we will never know anything about. Because my research is conducted across archives, I present it by drawing textual and visual connections between historical patents and newspaper accounts of shoplifters’ arrests at the turn of the 20th century. Since history forgets women’s shoplifting when it’s successful, this research is also necessarily speculative: drawing from the transcripts of those that failed, I try to reimagine successful thefts, and from the accounts of those that ripped or spilled, secret pockets that were never discovered.      


    — Silvia Bombardini

    Dr Silvia Bombardini is an Associate Lecturer at UAL, teaching at LCF and LCC. For her PhD in Visual Sociology at Goldsmiths University, which was part of the ERC-funded ‘Politics of Patents (POP)’ project, she researched shoplifters’ clothes at the turn of the 20th century. For her MRes, in Visual Cultures, she put forth a revaluation of luxury counterfeits from feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial perspectives. Silvia contributed to edited books (Radical Fashion Exercises, The Cultural Construction of Hidden Spaces), journals (The Sociological Review, Excursions), and before academia she worked as a journalist for several international publications, running a monthly ‘Coming of Age’ column for Shanghai-based magazine Modern Weekly China. Silvia is also an occasional film curator, and has worked with ASVOFF and MUBI.