2023 in Retrospect
Last year, I made a plan to blog more. In 2023, I have blogged relatively regularly, particularly during a very difficult period in the second half of the year (about which more in a moment). You can scroll through my 2023 posts here:
A Year of Two Halves2023 has been a unique year for me. I spent most of my research and writing time from January to July collaborating with Professor Rebecca Houze (Northern Illinois University, USA) on the second, revised edition of our co-edited book The Design History Reader. We worked together preparing the first edition in 2008-9, and have collaborated variously since then, including most recently in our second jointly edited book, Design and Heritage. Preparing a revised second edition of the Reader was a novel challenge for both of us. We are very happy to be able to include more diverse content, but we have been unable to include everything we wanted to, as was the case with the first edition. The DHR is a big book at 250,000 words, and even bigger in its enlarged second edition, so submitting the completed manuscript at the start of the summer was an exhausting task, followed by considerable relief. Thank you, sincerely, to our publishers at Bloomsbury for taking the book forward to publication in 2024. I am very keen to hear what the students, tutors, designers and others who read the book have to say about it, and how they will use it.
As well as submitting the DHR2 manuscript in July, that month I also attended a routine breast screening, offered by the NHS to all women over fifty. My screening found an invasive ductal carcinoma. Although breast cancer is common, with one in eight or one in seven women diagnosed at some point during their lives, the number of women invited for further screening following a routine mammogram is small, and the number of women diagnosed with cancer is smaller still. Although my cancer was discovered at a relatively early stage it was 40% larger than the average tumour found through the screening programme. I was put on hormone treatment to suppress my oestrogen receptors immediately, and had surgery to remove the tumour and some of my lymph nodes in mid-September, and radiotherapy in December. So my diagnosis and treatment spanned the second half of the year, finishing just in time for me to hope that 2024 will be cancer free, and better for it.
This transformative experience has changed my outlook on life. It has brought me into closer contact with other women among my friends and family who have had breast cancer. It has forced me to reevaluate and alter my lifestyle, at home and at work, in ways that I hope will be beneficial in future. It has intensified the reflective process that started last year when I turned fifty. Thank you to the friends and family who responded so generously to my birthday fundraiser this year in support of Breast Cancer Now, which provides information to breast cancer patients, including me, and to the charity Little Lifts for a kind gift of a box of pick-me-ups for me and every breast cancer patient in my region. I am also grateful to the staff of my local hospital for providing surgery, and particularly to the radiotherapists at Ipswich hospital for making sure I was treated there within the optimal period of twelve weeks post-surgery in spite of staff shortages closer to home, and junior doctor and consultant strikes during my treatment. And thank you to all my friends and family who sent flowers and plants and other treats along with their concern and care. It could not be more welcome and more appreciated.
The Rule of ThreeAlthough I had two periods of sick leave in the autumn term of 2023, my cancer treatment intensified the importance of the work that I was able to do at this time. Waiting for surgery was nerve-wracking so my work trip in September to Matosinhos, Porto, in Portugal provided a really wonderful distraction in the form of meetings with colleagues old and new, the opportunity to hear cutting edge research, and a chance to learn about a new-to-me region of Portugal following my visits to Aveiro for the ICDHS conference in July 2014, and my work as Visiting Professor on the Doctoral Programme in Design at IADE-U in Lisbon, 2013-14. I also met a cherished friend and two of her daughters who had recently moved to Porto. Portuguese design history is in very good shape, and the papers I heard were excellent, almost without exception.
Following my surgery, it was a tonic and an honour to catch the train to the University of Antwerp in October to deliver a talk to the interior design research group there, and to enjoy half a day of sightseeing in this amazing city. In preparation for my talk, I revisited an essay I wrote in 2008 as the introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Design History about the professionalisation of interior design. It was good to read fresh research in the area and to champion the work of early career researchers that has moved knowledge and understanding on in various ways. I am looking forward to developing this talk into an article in the coming year for potential publication thereafter.
A third and final work trip occurred in November when I attended the conference of AIS/Design, the Italian design history organisation. Although I serve on the AIS/Design journal’s editorial advisory board, this was my first AIS/Design conference. It was the tenth such conference and one which attracted an international group of delegates. Papers were delivered in Italian, or English, sometimes both. The morning of the second day was devoted to the work of Vanni Pasca, who was instrumental in founding AIS/Design and was fondly and reverently remembered. My talk on the research for my Hand Book (see image, top) picked up the theme I elaborated at the V&A/RCA History of Design 40th Anniversary, albeit in shortened form, just as the former talk was a shorted version of a chapter which appeared this summer.
These three international research trips, to Portugal, Belgium and Italy respectively, occurred over three consecutive months before and after my surgery, and before my radiotherapy. They enabled me to connect with a wide group of researchers in design history and reminded me, during a period in which my work activities were significantly curtailed, of how much of a privilege it is to work in our field, and to travel to do so. Thank you to the University of Hertfordshire, the Design History Society, and the University of Antwerp for supporting my travel and enabling this international engagement.
The Rule of Three also made an impact on me in 2023 in terms of the fact that three chapters in edited collections that I wrote during the pandemic were published this year, at three-monthly intervals in March, June and September respectively. I won’t say too much about them, because I have blogged about them during their research and writing. Here, I will just acknowledge that they are now in print, and point to the individual posts I made about them:
DHeritage Trio of HighlightsAside from my own research, I want to add on the theme of connecting with, and developing the work of others, that 2023 has been a very good year for DHeritage, the Professional Doctorate in Heritage which I direct at the University of Hertfordshire and again, three is the magic number, this time in terms of highlights I want to mention.
As part of our regular series of bespoke heritage workshops, we included a workshop on LGBTQ+ Heritage, and in preparation in May we visited London where colleague Dr Chris Lloyd led us on English Heritage’s LGBTQ+ walking tour around Soho and we visited the Queer Museum for a curator tour. The DHeritage student group is scattered across the UK and overseas so it is not easy to get together for study visits such as this one, although we certainly want to do more of this in future.
I was very proud of the students later that month when they convened a DHeritage conference at Arnos Vale Historic Cemetery in Bristol. This was a super chance to exchange research and spend time thinking together constructively about the work that the students are doing in the programme. We also enjoyed a study visit to Textile Conservation Ltd, owned run by an ex-student, Alison Lister, at premised across the road from the cemetery.
Finally, I couldn't have been more proud than I was the day after I returned from Porto in September, attending the University of Hertfordshire’s graduation ceremony to present Dr Helen Casey to the Vice-Chancellor, and to watch Assoc. Prof. Dr Susan Parham present Dr Kate Lockhart Ayres-Kennet, when both Helen and Kate received their DHeritage Professional Doctorates. Each of them has worked extremely hard and undergone considerable personal and professional challenges during their years of doctoral research. It is such a career highlight to join them in celebrating their achievements.
Posting: The Personal in the ProfessionalMy main purpose in writing this blog, and maintaining this website, is to share my work with others in an informal way that differs from the academic writing I publish in my books and articles. It is important to me that my work should be accessible to interested readers, and I want to make connections between the things I write that might otherwise not be apparent. An additional benefit for me as author of this blog is that it provides an outlet for my reflective tendencies, and encourages a practice of reflection that I think is healthy and beneficial, up to a point. Here is a selection of my posts reflecting on the years I have been writing this blog:
Unlike my blog and website, which exist to share my research in ways which differ from standard academic outputs, my social media posts have more varied intentions.
LinkedIn is, for me, strictly business. I see others using it to post about their work exclusively and I follow suit. I note that the posts I read are sometimes so-called ‘humble brags’ or virtue signalling but even so the content my connections post is of interest and relevance to me, and the responses I receive suggest the same is true of my own posts. I only connect there with people I have worked with directly, in person or online.
My account on X (twitter) is open to all and I use it to point to content which I think has design historical relevance. My use of X/twitter has changed over since I first posted there in July 2009, when my aim was to share a demystifying diary of an academic. I then followed advice from the Society of Authors, of which I am a member, to engage readers with a mixed diet of personal as well as professional observations. However, because I wanted to maintain a fully open account, and as twitter has become more abrasive, I decided to keep my feed there an almost entirely professional one.
My Instagram account is quite different. I perceive Instagram as a less critical space than X/twitter and I use my account there as a public gratitude journal, sharing things that are worthwhile, in my view, across my personal and professional activities. I would like to keep this account open to all but of course that status is under continuous review.
Although I post about my work on Facebook, too, I regard my account there as primarily personal. I only connect with people I have met, whether in personal or work contexts.
This blog, and the website encompassing it, take elements from each of my other platform uses. This site is about my work, but I want to share the personal within the professional here, as you can see from my reflective comments about 2023, above. I have used my professorship in a candid way, to puncture the status that too many profs uphold by pulling rank and maintaining a lofty distance. Since my promotion to full professor in 2017, I have continued the work I started as Chair of my university’s Researcher Development Group, by leading on career and wellbeing issues, first by founding the Network of Women+ Professors at Hertfordshire, as one of the founders of the Academic Women’s Advancement Group (AWAG) there, and now as a supportive founding chair to NW+P, and through mentoring across the University. I also see my roles as Chair of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Design History and as Member (Academic and International) of the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as relevant to my role in developing the work of others. An ex-colleague (not at Hertfordshire) referred to my blog and website as self-promotional; such an unfortunate misconception reminds me to be clear about my actual intentions, which are focused on sharing my work accessibly in ways that my readers will enjoy and/or find useful. Feedback suggests that I am succeeding in that aim.
Thank you to all the readers of my blog, whether regulars or occasional visitors. I am very grateful for your engagement and encouragement. I have a heavy writing schedule for 2024, but I hope I will be able to continue blogging, ideally in shorter more regular posts: let’s see.
