CDH PGR Pragya Sharma reflects on this year’s annual Centre for Design History celebration of our PhD research

The day-long Centre for Design History’s annual Symposium was held on the 13th of June at the Grand Parade Campus in Brighton. As part of the program were 20-minute presentations by PGRs across the University of Brighton that explored in depth their ongoing research as part of PhD projects. Attended by CDH members and members from the wider University community, the day neatly transitioned from clothing-based research in the morning to explorations of memory and oral history narratives in the afternoon session.

 

The textile-themed morning panel that moved across the world, from the UK to Japan and finally to India, included presentations by three CDH members, all nearing the end of their second year. Aurore Damoiseaux presented Knitwear at Greenham Common: Carnivalesque textile creation as anti-nuclear activism that zoomed in on the peace camp set up near Royal Air Force Greenham Common military base in Newbury in 1981 as a response to the housing of American Cruise nuclear missiles on British soil. Through evocative photographs, Aurore shared the knitwear contributions of women at the camp and how activists employed the act of knitting as a tool for protest.

 

The knitwear theme also underlined Pragya Sharma’s presentation Knitting the Vernacular: Understanding Crafting through Indian Women’s Magazine Sarita 1946-1950 which looked at popular Hindi magazines that helped spread the practice of hand-knitting among Indian women. Not only was the presentation visually exciting, with patterns and images of knitwear but it also sketched a comparative analysis of Hindi magazines with those in English in how the instructions were dialogically communicated, establishing a rapport with the reader.

 

Freshly back from her fieldwork in Japan where she conducted interviews with craftspeople, Anika Shaikh’s talk Translation of textile practice: ‘homespun’ in Iwate today pursued the discourse on how woollen fabric as an uncommon material saw a surge in its demand in Iwate alongside Westernization of clothes in the twentieth century. Not only does homespun thrive in the Tohoku area as local farmers’ side hustles with intergenerational overlaps between families and their workshops but the practice finds a continuing presence in the region albeit with shifting values and meanings accorded to the handicraft.

 

After a sumptuous lunch, the symposium moved on to the afternoon session that began with Marion Allard who took us to an overlooked geography, Laos in Southeast Asia. Her riveting talk Preserving and re-interpreting memories in Lao diasporic communities followed the arc of family history, touching upon themes of migration, of people rebuilding lives and cultural silence. Focusing on Lao diasporic communities in London, Paris and Southern France in the twentieth century, Marion’s presentation emphasised how stories and memories are inherited. She supported her discussion by bringing in the work of artists Vong Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier. Central to her enquiry is how photographic archives can be used to construct novel and renewed understanding between generations.

The strand of memory was taken up by Kamal Badhey who took us to the ‘Black Country’, to the city of Wolverhampton. Her talk was called Unpacking Intergenerational Conversation in the Apna Heritage Archive. A final-year researcher, as part of her PhD project, Kamal researched a photographic archive that holds family photographs of the British Punjabi diaspora from the 1950s-1980s. Her presentation centred on intergenerational ‘dialogue and reflection’ among the family members. An equally important dimension that her presentation focused on was the research process where she discussed her experiences interviewing the families, thereby building a wholesome discussion on people, stories and relationships, and why they matter.

 

Anne Nielsen, a collaborative PhD researcher with the University of Brighton and the British Museum, presented Investigating ‘duplicates’ in museums that brought in an industry perspective when it comes to objects and design history. In her project, Anne is challenging commonly held assumptions about museum objects deemed ‘unique, irreplaceable and catalogued.’ In introducing her thesis, Anne outlined historic museum practices of acquiring, dispersing and exchanging ‘duplicates’ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries while highlighting lacunae and unexamined aspects within the existing scholarship. She explained the rationale for employing the British Museum as the main case study for her project. There was much to learn and absorb from her insightful talk.

 

As a research showcase, the yearly CDH Symposium has always been a wonderful platform to share as well as learn about the current work of PGRS, what they are up to, and how they have progressed in their PhD journeys. The Q&A sessions and social breaks sparked off intriguing discussions around the ethics of research, interviewing practices and most importantly, the well-being of a researcher. The day concluded with a much-needed unwinding at the Beach!

The blog feature image shows the catalogue for our Graduate Show, which features research from BA, MA and PhD students working within the wide remit of Design History.