Dr. Alice Twemlow is a Research Professor at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and an Associate Professor at ACPA, Leiden University where she supervises PhDArts candidates whose research explores, or is conducted through, art or design practice. She was recently appointed first special professor in the Wim Crouwel chair in the History, Theory and Sociology of Graphic Design and Visual Culture at the University of Amsterdam, where she is looking at how an intersectional data feminist approach can be used to re-read and thereby decolonize the graphic design archive.
Twemlow’s research, at the intersection of design history, environmental humanities, and artistic research, explores such topics as the relationship between geological time and design, walking as a research method, salvage as a concept and method, and the relationship between fiction and design. Her current project, titled ‘Design and the Deep Future’, aims to contribute alternative interpretations, interventions, and imaginaries to climate and environmental justice research.
Previously, Twemlow was head of the Master Department in Design Curating & Writing at Design Academy Eindhoven, and before that she was the founding chair of the MFA in Design Criticism and the MA in Design Research, Writing & Criticism at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
She has an MA and a Ph.D in History of Design from the program run jointly by the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art in London, and her book, Sifting the Trash: A History of Design Criticism, was published by MIT Press in 2017.