Penny Sparke
Position
Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise)
Introduction
Professor Penny Sparke, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise) Kingston University, graduated from the University of Sussex in 1971 with a BA (Hons) in French Literature. She was awarded a Postgraduate Certificate in Education in 1972 and from 1972–1975 she studied for a doctorate at Brighton Polytechnic (awarded 1975). Her thesis was entitled Theory and Design in the Age of Pop.
Since 1975 she has taught the History of Design to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Brighton Polytechnic and, from 1981 to 1999, at the Royal College of Art. She has also, since that time, worked in the field of late nineteenth and twentieth century Design History and has lectured, curated exhibitions, broadcast and published widely in that broad field both in the UK and overseas In addition to her numerous articles and book chapters her single authored books include An Introduction to Design and Culture, 1900 to the present (1986, new edition 2004); Japanese Design (1986); Design in Context (1987); and Italian Design (1988). In 1995 she published As Long As It’s Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste. A special interest has been the meaning of design within the context of consumption and its relationship with gender and identity and, from the mid 1990s she has focused her attention on the subject of the ‘interior’. In 2005 she published a monograph entitled, Elsie de Wolfe and the Birth of Modern interior Decoration, and her book, The Modern Interior, was published in June 2008.
Professor Sparke has represented the History of Design on the Arts and Humanities Research Board and has been a member of two AHRC funded research project advisory boards. She also represented the discipline in her role as a member of the History of Art, Architecture and Design sub-panel for HEFCE’s 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.
She has also supervised and examined research students across a wide range of topics within twentieth-century design and culture.
Professor Sparke is an Honorary Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art and a Fellow of the Society of Arts.
Professor Sparke has represented the History of Design on the Arts and Humanities Research Council and has been a member of two AHRC funded research project advisory boards.