History of Design (MA)

'CONFLUENCE - V&A/RCA History of Design 2024/25' text on a blue fluid texture background .

The V&A/RCA History of Design programme is a unique MA, jointly delivered with the Victoria and Albert Museum. Straddling the art college and the museum, we combine rigorous scholarship with experimental methodologies and cross-disciplinary collaborations. Our expansive chronology ranges from 1400 to the contemporary and our geographies are truly global. Our work is public-facing and socially and environmentally engaged, encompassing histories of material culture, photography, and performance.

This year’s graduating cohort of 25 students collaborated on the symposium ‘Confluence’, and accompanying publication. These explore and expand on their common interests in themes such as technology, identity, nature, anxiety and performance, seamlessly bringing together their wide-ranging work on the Programme. Topics such as childhood clothing and funeral planning in early modern England, appear alongside 21st century DIY Chinese lantern kits and the development of the AI sparkle icon. From English/Caribbean gardens to New York Black Lives Matter murals, via Arts and Crafts wallpaper and life-saving hammocks, the work of this year’s cohort really shows us the breadth of study that Design History embraces.

This year we were also proud to see exciting student-led projects that were seeded in our teaching and learning activities but took on a life of their own. These included the  ‘Between the Seams’ collaborative symposium with postgraduate students from Parsons New School Paris and London College of Fashion, and a range of blog posts for the V&A Museum. Resourceful, creative and critically engaged, we hope you enjoy a glimpse of our students and the fruits of their labours across these profile pages.

Sarah Cheang, Head of Programme

Our students

Image of a historical newspaper featuring an etching showing a palatial building with a domed roof and clock tower, within a garden setting. Matilde Audisio
Four women sit on stage in a panel discussion in front of a large projected slide titled 'Designing Performance Histories: Anna Sverdlova, Clare Wren, Catallo-Werner and Polina Levchenko.' The slide displays three historical costume images with captions. The panelists are holding microphones and appear engaged in conversation, seated in front of a wooden backdrop in a dimly lit auditorium. Polina Levchenko
Aryna Sabalenka at Wimbledon, 2023. Image credit: Wimbledon. Annie Foley
Yuet Tung China Works, plates in different colours Vivian W.T. Pang
The garden of Marchelle Farrell, a medical psychotherapist and writer of 'Uprooting', originally from Trinidad and Tobago (Source: Photography by Olivia Cheung, June 2025, Somerset, UK). Olivia Cheung
A bamboo-framed dragon lantern in progress, mounted on a vertical pole. The structure features curved ribs and green paper fins, set against a blurred bamboo forest background. Hao Chen
Two graphic solid black sparkles on a white background Kelly Zhou
A photograph taken during a symposium presentation inside a domed auditorium. A large screen displays the title "Dining at Sea: Jessica Clark and Maria Velasco Zambrano" with four vintage cruise menus, including the Furness Bermuda Line. The speaker stands at a podium on the right while the seated audience watches from dimly lit rows. Maria Jose Velasco Zambrano
Abraham Bosse, Les IIII Ages de l’Homme (The Four Ages of Man): Childhood, 1636. Etching and engraving, sheet 25.8 × 32.4 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Accession number 26.49.27. (Accessed 13 June 2025 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/389889) Michaela Clarence
single-storey aluminium prefabricated structure with portholes Connie Hatt
Costume design of a woman in an off-white gown with stenciled geometric flowers. She holds a string of beads and wears a large feathered headdress. Clare Wren Catallo-Werner
Trade card for the Coffin Maker Robert Green, 1752. Mary Allgood
A photograph of an A-line historical Russian-style coronation gown with wide sleeves and pomegranate pattern. Anna Sverdlova
A storage area with wire racks holding framed paintings, historic clothing, and various artifacts in a well-lit, modern facility. Yuval Keshet
Book cover of 'Freedom Struggle by the Provisional IRA' featuring a black and white image of the upper body of a man wearing a field jacket and dark coloured beret, looking through the viewfinder of an RPG 7 rocket launcher while crouched in a field. The title of the book is in a 'Celtic' font on a bright green background. Eilidh Duffy
A beehive in Jerome Allotment. (Source: Photography by Y. Yang, April 2025) Yichi Yang
This is an image taken of a watercolour palette from 1890 which folds out in four different ways and has a thumb hole so that it sits nicely on the hand. Charlotte Louise Rendle
British Empire Exhibition, Wembley 1925 Poster advertisement Jessica Clark
A print with a line down the middle with a rotary telephone on the left of the line and a woman's face on the right side. Next to the woman is a road leading from the edge of the print to the center with a man turned away from the viewer walking along the road. Kendra Lyimo