Cheryl Buckley

Cheryl Buckley is Professor of Fashion and Design History with a special interest in relationships between gender and design within the context of feminist theories and design history.

Exploring the ideas underpinning the production, dissemination and consumption of design broadly conceived, Cheryl's expertise covers women's roles in ceramic design, fashion and its role in shaping feminine identities, and the ordinary and everyday in relation to design.

Recent research supported by an AHRC Fellowship returned to the theme of the ordinary to explore the ways in which fashion is embedded in everyday lives. This project undertaken with Hazel Clark at Parsons School of Design in New York  resulted in a jointly authored book, Fashion and Everyday Life: Britain and America, 1890-2010 published in 2017. An interest in gender and feminism has been intrinsic to Cheryl’s practice as a design historian, and she remains committed to indisciplinarity and the questioning of dominant narratives about history. In 2018, her keynote at the Beyond Change symposia in Basel organised by the Swiss Design Network led to the article 'Made in Patriarchy II: Researching (or Re-searching) Women and Design', Design Issues, vol.36, no.1, Jan 2020. This returned to the themes of one of her first research contributions to debates about women, gender and design, 'Made in Patriarchy: Towards a Feminist Analysis of Design', Design Issues,  vol.3, no.,2, Fall 1986.

Cheryl has supervised eleven PhDs to completion in a range of subjects across design history, fashion and dress history, architectural history and fine art.  She is currently supervising three students working on fashion, memory and sustainability; fashion and textiles in post-colonial Jamaica; and disability and arts practice. 

Before taking up this appointment, Cheryl Buckley was Professor of Design History and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In addition to leading research in Visual and Material Culture and bidding successfully for RCUK funding (AHRC BGP 1 in 2008, ESRC Case Studentships in 2008, AHRC CDA in 2012, AHRC Fellowship in 2012), she led and managed research across a large School that included Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. She was a co-founder of the journal Visual Culture in Britain in 2000, and remains on its Advisory Board. Course Leader of BA(Hons) History of Modern Art, Design and Film, MA Cultural History and MA Visual Arts, Cheryl has been involved in subject and course development throughout her career. She led the development of the MA Cultural History in 1998, the MA Humanities Framework in 2002 and the MRes Arts in 2009. She was Director of Postgraduate Studies (Development & Standards) for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences between 2005-7, and led the ‘Culture, Heritage and Identity’ Research group between 2006-7 and ‘Design, Creativity and Digital Media’ University research strand from 2009-2012. From 2006 to 2009, she was Chair of the Design History Society and between 2011 and 2016 she was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Design History. Since arriving in Brighton, she co-founded (with Jeremy Aynsley) the Internationalisng Design History research group in 2014 followed by the Centre for Design History in 2017. She has just joined the Advisory Editorial Board of the journal Design Issues, and has just been appointed External Examiner at Central Saint Martins.

Cheryl taught a level 6 module "Fashion and Everyday Life in London and New York' between 2013 and 2016, and she currently contributes to the MA module 'New Directions in Fashion and Dress History'. Throughout her career, she has developed new modules, degrees, and programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her own teaching sought to draw on new research.