Harriet Atkinson

Dr Harriet Atkinson is a historian of art and design, with experience in filmmaking, curating, policymaking and grantgiving. Harriet was a founder member of the Centre for Design History, where she co-leads the Design Activism research strand. She is Course Leader for University of Brighton's MA Curating Collections and Heritage, run with Brighton & Hove Museums.

Harriet's research interests include art, design and dress for propaganda, protest, resistance, dissent and solidarity; government engagements with art and design; and histories of exhibitions and world's fairs.

Current research:

Graphic Design Histories for Creative Dissent: Archiving and Ethical Challenges Until December 2027, Harriet is part of the team for the Trans-Atlantic Platform project Graphic Design Histories for Creative Dissent: Archiving and Ethical Challenges, which focuses on protest graphics across Brazil, South Africa and the UK, from 1950 to the present. The project is funded through FAPESP, NRF and UKRI. Collaborators include Prof Teal Triggs, Royal College of Art (PI); Dr Tai Cossich, Brighton; Prof Priscila Farias, University of São Paulo; Prof Guilherme Altmayer, University of São Paulo; Prof Deirdre Pretorius, University of Johannesburg; Dr Thandi Gamedze, University of the Western Cape; and Prof Lee-Shae Sharnick-Udemans, University of the Western Cape. As part of the project, Harriet is co-directing three, interlinked project documentary films, in collaboration with filmmaker Jane Dibblin.

Designing from Home (2025), which Harriet co-directed with Sue Breakell, produced by Banyak Films, is about the North London house of graphic designer F.H.K. Henrion, a family home and the office for an expanding design practice for over more than 40 years. Read a feature about Harriet's filmmaking in Camden New Journal here (p.20-1). The film won Best Short Documentary at London Independent Film Festival 2026 and was runner up in the Documentary Short category at Brighton Rocks International Film Festival 2026. Watch the trailer here.

Lost and Found: the biography of a photo album Harriet is writing a new book, exploring personal photographs and the politics of memory, reflections sparked by a family album compiled by her artist grandmother Rachel Carnegie (1901-1997) and returned to Harriet by a stranger who had bought it on eBay.

Recent research:

Decolonising the Archive: creating an archive for impactful policy-making In 2025, Harriet collaborated with curator and cultural strategist Clare Cumberlidge, artist and archivist Êvar Huseynî and youth organisers The Advocacy Academy on the Research England-funded project Decolonising the Archive: creating an archive for impactful policy-making and the linked Royal College of Art-led project Radical Archiving for Change.

UK government participation at Osaka Expo 2025 Harriet was commissioned by Department for Business and Trade to write an independent report evaluating the design and development of the UK Pavilion at Osaka Expo 2025, delivered in January 2026.

The Materialisation of Persuasion From 2019-23, Harriet was Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellow and Principal Investigator leading the project '"The Materialisation of Persuasion": Modernist Exhibitions in Britain for Propaganda and Resistance, 1933 to 1953'. This resulted in:

* the book Showing resistance: propaganda and Modernist exhibitions in Britain, 1933-53 (Manchester University Press, 2024), published Open Access and available to download here, winner of the 2026 Historians of British Art Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period 1800-1960.

* a chapter for co-edited book British Writing, Propaganda, and Cultural Diplomacy in the Second World War and Beyond (Bloomsbury, 2024)

* a chapter for co-edited book Exhibition as Interior, Interior as Exhibition: Spaces of Display within and beyond the Museum and Gallery (Bloomsbury, 2025)

* the co-edited book Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries: Transnational Exchanges Through Art, Architecture and Design from 1945, with Dr Verity Clarkson and Dr Sarah Lichtman (Bloomsbury, 2022)

* an article about Misha Black's networks through exhibitions (Journal of Design History, 2021)

* podcast series Graphic Interventions (available on ITunes and Spotify)

* the documentary film Art on the Streets (2023), co-directed with filmmaker Jane Dibblin, narrated by Michael Rosen and made with film charity Four Corners. The film has screened in Berlin, Porto, Izmir, San Francisco and beyond. From June 2024 to March 2026, it screened daily at Tate Britain's Marie von Motesiczky Archive Gallery. View the film's trailer here.

Cultural historian Professor Joanna Bourke described Art on the Streets as: ‘A documentary for our times. Aesthetically beautiful, politically gripping, and inspiring', while Financial Times Architecture and Design critic Edwin Heathcote described it as 'a life-affirming view of the capacity of art and design to provide hope in the darkest circumstances'.

The film has garnered several awards and nominations at international film festivals including: Finalist, London Director Awards 2025; Nominee, Learning on Screen Awards 2024; Official selection, Festival Internacional de Cine de la No-Violencia Activa (FICNOVA), 2024; Winner, 'Best Documentary Short', Luleå International Film Festival Sweden 2023; Winner, 'Best Documentary for Peace', Bridge of Peace Film Awards 2023; Winner, 'Best Documentary Short', California International Shorts Festival 2023; Finalist, 'Best Short Documentary', New York International Film Awards 2023; Finalist, Berlin International Art Film Festival 2023; Official Selection, Berlin Women Cinema Festival 2023; Official Selection, Miami Women Film Festival 2023; Official Selection, LA Independent Women Film Awards 2023; Official Selection, Cinecity Brighton Film Festival 2023; Nominee, Tokyo International Cinema Awards 2023; Official Selection, History Arts and Sciences International Doc Fest 2023. 

I welcome PhD applications in the following areas:

• government or 'official' uses of art and design
• design and dress for propaganda and protest
• design, diplomacy and soft power
• exhibition and display histories

If you are planning a project connected to my research but not listed here feel free to contact me to discuss it further at [email protected]. 

Successful PhD applicants can join the Centre for Design History's vibrant research community or any of the other University of Brighton Centres for Research Excellence.

My current and former PhD students have focused on themes including: political poster design; protest dress and textiles; Cold War photobooks; conscientious objector art practises; clothing production and consumption during World War Two; museum exhibition design; and duplicates, disposal and dispersal in museums. I have examined PhDs at University College London, University of Antwerp, University of Oslo, University of Southampton, Kingston University and University of Brighton.

Harriet is elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; sits on the Editorial Board of Journal of Design History, 2023-8; and is Advisory Board member for Bloomsbury Design Library. She won University of Brighton's Research and Knowledge Exchange Excellence Award 2024; was Knowledge Exchange lead in her School, 2023-4; was selected for the first cohort of University of Brighton's Vice Chancellor's Future Research Leaders programme, 2022-3; and sat on the University's Cross-School Research Ethics Committee, 2024-6.

Harriet was awarded a University of Brighton Rising Stars Award, 2017-8, for the project 'Information, Persuasion, Citizenship: Public Exhibitions 1914 to now'. While a Faculty Fellow at University of Brighton Design Archives, 2010-3, she wrote a number of essays, reviews and her first monograph The Festival of Britain: A Land and its People (I.B. Tauris, 2012). She was section editor for 'design dissemination' for three-volume Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design (lead editor Professor Clive Edwards, 2015) and interviewer for the major oral history project tracing the origins of Design History (led by Dr Linda Sandino).

Harriet was awarded a doctorate from Royal College of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum's History of Design programme in 2006. She studied for a BA (Hons) in English and Related Literature with History of Art at University of York and for a MA in Art Museum Studies at the Courtauld Institute, University of London. Harriet has previously held a number of research awards including an AHRC Doctoral Award, British Academy Small Grant and Wingate Scholarship. Her research has also been supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, German Historical Institute Washington and Design History Society.

Harriet was Trustee and Research Grants Officer of Design History Society, 2015-20. She regularly undertakes peer reviews for: journals including Journal of Design History, The Sculpture Journal, Literature & History, Contemporary British History; publishers including Routledge, Bloomsbury Academic, Berg, Palgrave Macmillan, Manchester University Press; academic conferences including DHS, International Conferences on Design History and Studies (ICDHS), Design Research Society (DRS), International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR); and academic grant applications + awards including Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Icelandic Research Fund and the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO). 

Harriet welcomes media enquiries. She has extensive experience across print and broadcast media, including writing for newspapers (The Guardian, The Independent, Yorkshire Evening Post); for magazines (BBC History and British Archaeology); being interviewed live on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live; doing pre-recorded interviews for BBC Radio 5 Live and Times Radio; and being interviewed for History Extra Podcast (among other podcast appearances).

Harriet draws in her research and teaching from previous experience working on cultural policy and funding for a range of public organisations including advising ministers on National Lottery distribution at Department for Culture Media & Sport; assessing grant applications at Heritage Lottery Fund, the Museums & Galleries Commission and Greater London Enterprise; and working as Culture and Regeneration Manager with London local authorities at London Councils. She has also worked as fundraiser with a range of charitable and community organisations.

Harriet is Course Leader for MA Curating Collections and Heritage, a collaborative masters programme developed between University of Brighton and Brighton & Hove Museums. She has a PGCert in Teaching & Learning in Higher Education and is Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Since 2013 she has taught on the University of Brighton's History of Art and Design BA degrees, the MA Curating Collections and Heritage and the MA History of Design and Material Culture.