Sarah Teasley

Sarah Teasley works across social history and design research. Her research explores how power relations shape experience and access to power, with particular attention to intersectional aspects such as gender, class and culture.

Sarah is known for her research in the history of design, craft and manufacturing in modern Japan, and for her extensive collaborations with the galleries, museums, libraries and archives (GLAM) sector.

One strand of her research, teaching and PhD supervision explores how designers, makers and people more widely engage with emergent technologies and materials in everyday practice. Current projects include the ARC-funded AusEaaSI, the Australian Emulation Network preserving and making accessible Australia's born digital cultural heritage, and Fibers of Existence, a collaboration to rethink practices of repair as technical know-how through the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

She is equally invested in supporting access and equity to design power and knowledge through her research, teaching, PhD supervisions and institutional work. She has published extensively on gender, class and power in design and works as part of Designing Entangled Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific (DESIAP).

Her other core commitment is to transdisciplinary approaches and exchange between academic disciplines and between researchers and diverse industry and social communities, to enable and strengthen capacities for meaningful social and environmental change.

Her publications include Global Design History (Routledge 2011) and Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion 2022), as well as numerous book chapters and articles in journals such as Design Issues, The Journal of Design History and The Review of Japanese Society and Culture. She is a member of the Advisory Boards of Design and Culture and Design Issues, and previously served as Associate Editor of Design and Culture and Vice President of the Design Studies Forum.

Sarah Teasley teaches onto the Masters in Design innovation and Technology (MDIT) and supervises HDR (PhD) candidates exploring similar research questions in design, publishing, curatorial practice, craft and the history of design and technology, primarily through practice research approaches. She has supervised 14 PhDs to completion.

Sarah Teasley has extensive experience in industry and cross-disciplinary academic partnerships with museums, charities and design researchers and practitioners, and in consultancy for museums, government and the private sector.

In 2015-2020, she led the RCA’s joint postgraduate programme in History of Design with the Victoria and Albert Museum, co-designing and delivering integrated degree and research opportunities. In 2017-2020, she served as academic lead for the Design Trust-RCA Fellowship in Design Curation, a partnership to accelerate the development of creative curatorial expertise in design and architecture in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area.

Her consultancy work as an expert in design history, particularly design in modern Japan and histories of design innovation policy and practice, includes engagement with museums (exhibitions, permanent collections and public programming), national and local governments in Japan and the UK, SMEs and major multinational corporations. She has extensive experience in design publishing and film festival programming, including working in grassroots, bottom-up community organisations.

She is a strong advocate for multidisciplinary, industry-integrated research and learning and for responsive, respectful research that facilitates individual and community agency in decision-making.

Please visit Sarah's ORCiD profile to find out more about her research.

Sarah Teasley supervises HDR (PhD) candidates exploring similar research questions in design, publishing, curatorial practice, craft and the history of design and technology, primarily through practice research approaches. She has supervised 14 PhDs to completion.