CDH PGR Isabel Duarte reports on the recent International Conference on Design History and Design Studies, and the range of papers delivered by the CDH members in attendance.

The 14th edition of the International Conference on Design History and Design Studies took place on the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi campus between 10 and 12 October 2025. The beautiful campus—featuring, among other buildings, a modernist structure designed by J.K. Chowdhury in 1961—offered a fresh, leafy, and quiet refuge from the busy commotion of Delhi’s streets. Yet, much like the buzzing city outside, the mood inside the conference rooms was one of excitement. Around 300 scholars from across the world gathered each day to hear engaging papers and keynotes. The campus proved to be a fantastic setting for conversations to flourish: presentations sparked new collaborations, and multiple generations of design enthusiasts had the opportunity to mingle.

The conference opened with a moving ceremony featuring the IIT Director and the organising team. The first keynote, delivered by Laila Tyabji, offered a rich reflection on the sometimes productive, sometimes fraught relationships between design, craft, identity, and sustainability. Drawing on her long-established research and deep connections with craftspeople in India, she provided a textured account of these entanglements. The morning concluded with a stimulating panel discussion between Sarita Sundar, Arjun Ghosh, Sarah Teasley and Priscila Lena Farias, during which notions of neutrality, certainty, maps, and landscapes were productively questioned and complicated. The tone was set: the next 72 hours were going to be exciting.

The following two days were packed with panels and keynotes. Without any hierarchy or preference, I highlight here just a few of the many compelling presentations I had the pleasure to attend. Evelyn Maísa Hettwe (University of São Paulo) delivered an insightful paper on representations of domesticity in Brazilian advertising during the military regime. Kshiraja Krishnan (Royal College of Art, UK) offered an interdisciplinary reading of the cartography of cinemas in Bombay and its impact on cultural history, showing how these spaces became some of the earliest homogenised environments across class, caste and gender in modern India. Benedetta Toledo and Ernesto Ramon Rispoli (University of Naples, Italy) presented a poignant and enjoyable paper on the creativity and impact of spontaneous and makeshift design solutions encountered in Naples. Gwendolyn Kulick (German University in Cairo) invited us to rethink who an “ethical” initiative truly empowers through her study of aid programmes, philanthropic undertakings and community development projects in Pakistan, advancing the concept of “designing for coalescence.” Nuno Coelho (University of Coimbra, Portugal) guided us through a history of Portugal told through its brands, revealing how consumer visual culture both reflects and shapes national identity. And Sarah Cheang (Royal College of Art, UK) expertly combined adorable images of Chow Chows with an unsettling analysis of the constructions of race and cultural myths about China and Chinese people that persist today—eliciting both laughter and wincing from the audience.

CDH PGR Pragya Sharma winning a prize for Distinguished Paper from an Emerging Scholar

Colleagues announcing the award of a Distinguished Paper to Isabel Duarte

It is also worth highlighting the strong presence of the University of Brighton, and in particular the Centre for Design History. Pragya Sharma delivered a wonderful study of one of the oldest hand-knitted objects from India—a pair of long gloves housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford—using it as a catalyst to interrogate who has the power to collect and what global design history includes, excludes, and why. Aurore Damoiseaux presented a fascinating history of anti-nuclear activism through knitwear. Finally, Harriet Atkinson opened a window into design history through the study of activist groups and their collaborative making practices, focusing on the feminist collective See Red Women’s Workshop and their striking posters. The conference also featured Jonathan Woodham’s rigorous and insightful keynote on the history of the International Conference on Design History, tracing its many developments, challenges and intentions from the inaugural 1999 edition in Barcelona to the present.

Jonathan Woodham’s keynote to ICDHS14

Saurabh Tewari and the organising team were extraordinarily generous and made ICDHS14 a very special and enriching experience—from the remarkable welcome bag attendees received (including a tote bag, notebook and lanyard, all handmade by local craftspeople, each strand of the conference represented by a unique pattern), to the excellent food provided each day, to their commitment to ensuring the programme ran smoothly and on time. The fantastic team of volunteers—mainly design students—were joyful, efficient, and an essential part of what made the experience so enjoyable.

CDH members gathering inspiration for future research