V&A/RCA History of Design MA

Join a Master’s programme jointly run by two world-leading centres of excellence for scholarship and creativity, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and Royal College of Art (RCA). Develop advanced knowledge, skills and approaches from the perspective of design history.

Our research-led teaching and experiential methods inspire and train future leaders in the field. Alumni of the programme are working successfully in various positions across universities, museums, cultural organisations, design firms and media outlets, as well as in independent practice.

We see the history of design as interdisciplinary and future-facing. We offer ground-breaking tools and approaches for studying the history and material culture of design in everyday life, across a global geography from c. 1400 to the present. Our research and teaching ranges from the early modern to the contemporary, with particular expertise in the UK/Europe, North America and Asia, and transnational and global connections. Our programme is strongly committed to inclusivity, decoloniality and social and environmental engagement.

We combine scholarly excellence with risk-taking to forge histories of design and material culture that are public-facing and experimental. We draw on a global outlook, whether placing local histories in a comparative context or tracing global networks through material culture.

You explore topics as broad as fashion and textile history histories of architecture digital materialities material histories of medicine, science and technology the material culture of everyday life histories and practices of making, craft and embodied knowledge environmental history, ecologies of design and the Anthropocene history of theatre and performance social and political history in relation to design decoloniality and social justice through design history practice and global history through material culture.

Good first degree in a relevant subject