Nicola Miles

Nicola Miles is a design historian and Visiting Research Fellow in the Design Archives at the University of Brighton. Her research centres on twentieth-century fashion, textiles and decorative arts and craft, with a particular interest in the recovery and critical reassessment of under-recognised women practitioners. Her work advances a design historiography grounded in renewed engagement with archival sources, material analysis and oral testimony, demonstrating how such approaches can reshape understandings of both twentieth-century and contemporary British design.

She is currently leading a funded research project on the wallpaper and tile designs of Peggy Angus (1904–1993), based at The Keep public archive in Brighton. Her research is supported by the British Art Network, the Royal Historical Society and the Wallpaper History Society. Through the consolidation of the Peggy Angus Archive and the application of oral history methodologies, her work investigates the material, social and political dimensions of Angus’s practice in post-war Britain and situates it within significant networks of women designers. In her role as Visiting Research Fellow, she is extending this investigation by cross-referencing related holdings in the Design Archives, thereby strengthening the dialogue between collections and enhancing the research value of both archives. The work also demonstrates how design historiography can be enriched through renewed engagement with archival and material evidence. 

Nicola holds a BA in Textile Design (Print) and has worked professionally as a freelance textile designer specialising in children’s clothing. She completed an MA in Textiles at the University of Brighton in September 2019 and was awarded her PhD in May 2025, also from the University of Brighton. Her doctoral research examined the British kit-clothing company Clothkits (1968-88) and its innovative approach to the design, production and marketing of childrenswear. The project foregrounded children’s clothes as a significant field of study through which to explore the socio-cultural dynamics of the family, home and childhood in the mid to late twentieth century and repositioned domestic design practices as sites of creative and economic agency for women. This research revealed previously unexamined links between Clothkits and Peggy Angus and traced wider connections between women designers committed to hand-printing methods and Arts and Crafts philosophies, including Phyllis Barron, Dorothy Larcher, and Enid Marx.

Nicola’s doctoral research is forthcoming and is currently being prepared for publication in a range of formats:  an in-press scholarly book chapter; a journal article under review; a completed popular book; and a full-length scholarly monograph scheduled for publication in 2027.