University of Hertfordshire

Faculty Member, School of Creative Arts

Reader in Design History

School of Creative Arts

About

Grace Lees-Maffei BA Hons MA(RCA) PhD FHEA researches the mediation of design and philosophies of design to consumers, through channels such as advice literature, corporate literature, advertising and magazines and she is particularly concerned with issues of demotic design, domesticity and gender. Grace is:

Managing Editor of the Journal of Design History (Design History Society/Oxford University Press) http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/

Advisory Board member for The Poster (Intellect) http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-journal,id=181/

Coordinator of the TVAD research group http://tvad-uh.blogspot.com/

Member of the AHRC Peer Review College http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/About/PeerReview/Pages/default.aspx

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/

Editor of Writing Design: Words and Objects (Berg, 2011) http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1847889557/

Co-editor, with Rebecca Houze, of The Design History Reader (Berg, 2010) http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1847883893

Grace has been teaching in higher education since 1995 and is an active member of the design history community, as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Design History (2002-8), as a Trustee of the Design History Society (1998-2002) http://www.designhistorysociety.org/ and as convenor/chair for conferences.

Grace was co-convenor for Writing Design: Object, Process, Discouse, Translation, the 2009 Design History Society Annual Conference, hosted by the TVAD research group at the University of Hertfordshire 3-5 September 2009. http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/tvad/event030909.html

Grace gained her PhD in 2005 with a thesis entitled 'Modern Living: Domestic Advice Literature and Design Discourse in Post-War Britain.'

Dr Lees-Maffei is a qualified and experienced research supervisor interested in supervising research on the following themes:
    * Histories of design, applied arts and crafts of all periods and especially the 19th-21st centuries
    * Historiography and methodology as applied to design history and cultural history
    * The mediation of design in documentary sources such as magazines, advertising, corporate literature and advice
    * The everyday and domesticity
    * The consumption of design, fashion and taste.

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