This edited volume, published with Routledge in 2011, was the culmination of a three-year project, led jointly with Dr Glenn Adamson (Victoria and Albert Museum) and Dr Giorgio Riello (University of Warwick). I co-wrote the introduction and co-edited the volume, including intellectual direction, author selection, funding applications and chapter editing. The project, funded by grants from the Design History Society and the Florence H. and Eugene N. Myers Charitable Trust, convened 26 historians, designers, architects, sociologists, anthropologists and other humanities and social science researchers active in the UK, Europe, Australia, Asia and America to identify and assess questions and methods for writing histories of design in global networks. Each chapter was paired with a response, designed to expand the discussion and test the methodologies on offer.
A major focus was the applicability of methods in the emerging field of global history for design history, and vice versa; this project was the first in any field to investigate these questions directly, and as such was quickly contracted by Routledge as having potential for undergraduate and graduate teaching.
The project was public-facing from the onset. Participants first presented their chapters in three open symposia, held at Northwestern University (Evanston, USA), the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art in 2008 and 2009; these were followed by participants-only workshops and correspondence between participants to refine chapters for publication. Topics included:
- the global underpinnings of Renaissance material culture
- the trade of Indian cottons in the eighteenth-century
- the Japanese tea ceremony as a case of ‘import substitution’
- German design in the context of empire
- Australian fashions employing ‘ethnic’ motifs
- an experimental UK-Ghanaian design partnership
- Chinese social networking websites
Public responses to the book to date have included invitations to present the project to history and anthropology researchers and students in America, Turkey and Japan as well as extended discussions of the book as part of academic paper presentations and plenary session panel discussions at international conferences in Canada and Brazil.