About the Keynote Speakers
Penny Sparke
Penny Sparke is a Professor of Design History at Kingston University and the Director of the Modern Interiors Research Centre. She received her PhD from Brighton Polytechnic in 1975 and taught the History of Design at Brighton Polytechnic (1975–1982) and the Royal College of Art (1982–1999). From 1999 to 2005 she was Dean of the Faculty of Art, Design & Music at Kingston University and from 2005 to 2014 she was Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise). She has represented the History of Design in many ways both nationally and inter- nationally over her career. Her most important publications include An Introduction to Design and Culture, 1900 to the present (1986, 2004, 2013); Italian Design from 1860 to the present (1989); As Long as It’s Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste (1995); Elsie de Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration (2005); The Modern Interior (2008); and Nature Inside: Plants and Flowers in the Modern Interior (2021).
Sarah A. Lichtman
Sarah A. Lichtman, PhD, is the Chair of the History of Art and Design department at Pratt Institute. She is the former Dean of the School of Art, Design, History, and Theory at Parsons School of Design, The New School, and the former director of the MA program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies, offered in affiliation with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Her scholarship takes an interdisciplinary, feminist approach and her articles and reviews have appeared in leading journals and collections. Sarah is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Design History, having served as book reviews editor (2016–2021) and is currently managing editor (2021–present). Her work is broadly collaborative and in addition to her single authored publications, she is the co-editor of edited volumes, most recently Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries: Transnational Exchange through Art, Architecture and Design, 1945–1985 (2022), and the forthcoming Design, Displacement, Migration: Spatial and Material Histories (Routledge, 2023).
Kjetil Fallan
Kjetil Fallan is a Professor of Design History at the University of Oslo. His research interests revolve around twentieth-century design cultures, environmental histories of design, and histories of ecological design. Recent books include Ecological by Design: A History from Scandinavia (MIT Press, 2022); Nordic Design Cultures in Transformation, 1960–1980: Revolt and Resilience, co-edited with Christina Zetterlund and Anders V. Munch (Routledge, 2022); The Culture of Nature in the History of Design (Routledge, 2019); and Designing Modern Norway: A History of Design Discourse (Routledge, 2017). Fallan also serves as an editor of the Journal of Design History (Oxford University Press).