This chapter, commissioned for an edited book on history's reception, interpretation and use within different arts and humanities disciplines, critically explores the place of history as concept and practice within the field of design research, past and present. The chapter focuses on the research field known first as ‘design methods’, subsequently as ‘design research’, which is concerned with the creation, communication and application of systematic, repeatable methods to create positive and effective change through design. The chapter situates design research as a social practice shaped through its interactions with professional training and the academy, and as an economic practice within the university structure. It assesses how key actors within the ‘discourse communities or networks’ that constitute design research in the Anglosphere have previously employed or understood history in two significant milieus and moments: a journal titled Design Issues in the 1980s and early 1990s; and interpretations of history for design in the early 2010s. It also offers elements of design research that might benefit historians as well. Finally, it argues that history, as a method that’s both forensic and problem-posing, might enable design research to attend even more carefully to design’s environments, impact and power relations, and to create more effective, ethical products as a result. Ultimately, the chapter aims to bring history and design into dialogue: not through writing histories of design or by developing designs that reference national or other pasts, but through an exchange of methods.