Harriet Atkinson

Harriet Atkinson's research focuses on the history of design for communication, with a particular interest in exhibitions as visual communications and diplomatic contacts. From February 2019 to January 2023 Harriet will be an AHRC Leadership Fellow, working on the project '"The Materialisation of Persuasion": Modernist Exhibitions in Britain for Propaganda and Resistance, 1933 to 1953'. This builds on her recent University of Brighton Rising Stars Award (2017-18), for a project entitled 'Information, Persuasion, Citizenship: Public Exhibitions 1914 to now'.

Harriet has previously held research awards from the AHRC (Doctoral Award), British Academy (Small Grant) and Wingate Foundation (Wingate Scholarship). She is a member of the Management Board of University of Brighton's Centre for Design History. While a Faculty Fellow based in the University of Brighton Design Archives from 2010 to 2013, Harriet wrote a number of essays, reviews and her first monograph The Festival of Britain: A Land and its People (I.B. Tauris, 2012). Harriet was awarded her doctorate from the Royal College of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum's joint history of design programme in 2007. She studied for a BA (Hons) in English and Related Literature with History of Art at University of York and for her MA in Art Museum Studies at the Courtauld Institute, University of London.

Harriet is a registered PhD supervisor and welcomes applications from prospective PhD candidates with interests in the history and material culture of exhibitions and displays, of official or state-sanctioned design cultures, of design for protest, activism and contestation and of design as the focus for transnational exchange.