Faculty Member, School of Art and Design
Senior Lecturer in Design & Visual Culture
About
Dr Emma Ferry read History at the University of Southampton, where she specialised in 19th Century British Art and Architecture.
Having worked at Southampton Art Gallery and for the National Trust, she was later awarded the Oliver Ford Scholarship to study for an MA(RCA) in the History of Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art (1995-97). Emma also studied for a second Masters Degree in Nineteenth Century Studies at the University of Worcester (2001) achieving a Distinction, before being awarded a scholarship by Kingston University to study for PhD (2002-04).
Supervised by Professor Penny Sparke and Doctor Trevor Keeble, she received her doctorate for interdisciplinary research carried out on Macmillan’s ‘Art at Home Series’ (1876-83) in December 2004.
Emma is a qualified teacher, holding both a PGCE and a specialist teaching qualification (Cert.SpLD) in working with learners with Specific Learning Difficulties (dyslexia).
She has worked for the School of Art & Design History at Kingston University, where she is attached to the Modern Interiors Research Centre, at Worcester School of Art & Design, for the Department of Art History of the University of Bristol, at Oxford University for the School of Continuing Education and as a Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture at the School of Creative Arts at the University of the West of England, Bristol.
In September 2009 Emma was appointed as a full-time Senior Lecturer in Design and Visual Culture for the Fashion Knitwear and Textiles programmes at the School of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent University, where she is a member of the 'Fields of Fashion' Research Group
Emma is also external examiner for the Visual and Material Culture programme at Buckinghamshire New University
Emma’s most recent publications include ‘Lucy Faulkner and the ‘ghastly grin’: Re-working the title page illustration to Goblin Market’, in The Journal of William Morris Studies, Winter 2008; ‘‘A Novelty among Exhibitions’: The Loan Exhibition of Women’s Industries, Bristol 1885’ in E. Darling and L. Whitworth (eds.), Women and the Making of Built Space in England, 1870-1950, Ashgate, 2007; ‘‘… information for the ignorant and aid for the advancing …’ Macmillan’s ‘Art at Home Series’, 1876-1883’ in J. Aynsley and K. Forde, Design and the Modern Magazine, Manchester University Press, 2007; ‘Home and Away: Domesticity and Empire in the work of Lady Barker’, Women’s History Magazine, Autumn 2006 and ‘‘Decorators may be compared to doctors’: An Analysis of Rhoda and Agnes Garretts Suggestions for House Decoration (1876)’, Journal of Design History, No. 1 Vol. 16, January 2003.
This article has recently been reprinted in M. Taylor and J. Preston, Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, and is also included in The Design History Reader edited by Grace Lees-Maffei and Rebecca Houze for Berg. Other recent publications for Berg include the introductory chapter on the history of the Late-nineteenth Century Interior in Designing the Modern Interior: from the Victorians to Today edited by Penny Sparke (2009).
Emma has disseminated her research at a number of conferences and invited symposia. These include the Centre for Urban Culture, Nottingham University; the Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior (CSDI) at the V&A; the annual Women’s History Network conference and the Modern Interiors Research Centre at Kingston University. She has also reviewed several publications for the Journal of Design History (Oxford) and for the newly launched journal Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture (Berg)
Her current research project examines the changes made to the interior of a small village church in rural Worcestershire in the period 1890-1920. She is also working on a new textbook for Pearson Education aimed at students studying design.
