Jonathan Woodham

Since recognition as Emeritus Professor of Design History in 2017, Jonathan M Woodham has continued his work as an independent researcher, writer, speaker and consultant in design and design history. At the University of Brighton he was Director of the Design History Research Centre (1993-1995) before taking on senior university-wide research and development roles. He also played a lead role in establishing the Design Archives at the University of Brighton in 1995, including the securing of the extensive Design Council Archive and, later on, those of ICSID (now WDO) and ICOGRADA (now Ico-D) archives. He successfully bid to the Getty Archive Program for support for the development of the Design Council Archive in the Program’s ‘largest archival project’ in 1996. Today the Archive consists of 20 collections.

From the mid 1970s onwards Woodham played a significant role in developing design history as an academic discipline in the UK and beyond and has also been involved with the Design History Society, including a term as chair in the 1990s. He has also been a member of the editorial and advisory boards of several leading journals in the field, including the Journal of Design History (1988-2004) and Design Issues (1994-2018). Woodham has been invited as a keynote speaker on over 40 occasions in more than 30 countries and has supervised to completion 35 PhDs, examining 24 in the UK, Belgium, Italy, Finland and Australia. For more than 20 years he has been involved in the work of leading research councils in the UK, Europe and Canada.

Woodham has written more than 100 books, journal articles, book chapters and exhibition catalogue essays.  His most widely known book, Twentieth Century Design, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997 and has sold almost 60,000 English language volumes globally. He also authored the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Design (2004). A 2005 e-version was issued as part of Oxford Reference online: Oxford University Press, and a second updated and considerably expanded e-edition in 2016. He is currently working on a monograph focused on the considerable complexities of Histories of British Design 1915-2022: Empire, Welfare State and Enterprise, set against wider realities such as multiculturalism, and the pressures of, and debates concerning, devolution and identity in Scotland and Wales.