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 working on the Trans-Atlantic Platform project Graphic Design Histories for Creative Dissent: Archiving and Ethical Challenges, focusing on protest graphics across Brazil, South Africa and the UK, from 1950 to now. The project is funded through FAPESP, NRF and UKRI. Further information is 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.

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. Watch the trailer here and find out more here.

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. Also, a co-edited book, two chapters, a journal article, a podcast series and 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.

If you're a prospective PhD student, please do contact me with your research ideas. Usually, I'll suggest a Teams meeting and will offer to read one draft of your would-be research proposal, and to chat about PhD study more broadly. 

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; Editorial Board member of Journal of Design History, 2023-8; Advisory Board member for Bloomsbury Design Library. She won University of Brighton's main Research and Knowledge Exchange Excellence Award, 2024; was Humanities Knowledge Exchange lead, 2023-4; part of the first cohort of University of Brighton's Vice Chancellor's Future Research Leaders, 2022-3; and a member of 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 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 (2015) and interviewer for the Design History Society's major oral history tracing the origins of design history (2006-8).

Harriet was awarded her 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 held many research awards including from AHRC, ESRC and the British Academy. Her research has also been supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, German Historical Institute Washington, Wingate Foundation 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.

Since 2024, Harriet has led the MA Curating Collections and Heritage, a collaborative masters programme run with University of Brighton and Brighton & Hove Museums, which scored 100% for overall satisfaction in the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) in 2024-5 and 2025-6. Harriet has a PGCert in Teaching & Learning in Higher Education (2019) and is Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2019). Since 2013, she has taught across University of Brighton's History of Art and Design BA degrees, MA Curating Collections and Heritage and MA History of Design and Material Culture.