Dr. Alice Twemlow has been appointed Lector Design at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague.
Twemlow, a design critic, curator and educator, is particularly interested in design’s complex interrelations with time and the environment. Her current research focuses on the material manifestations and the meanings of design when it is disposed of and becomes trash. British-born Twemlow spent 17 years in New York where she was the founding director of the Design Research, Writing & Criticism MA at the School of Visual Arts, before moving to Amsterdam in 2015.
Of her new role at KABK and Leiden University, she says,
“I am thrilled to be joining the vibrant research community that already flourishes between these two institutions. I am looking forward to further developing this hybrid space which combines the rigor of academic research with the vitality of design practice. And of course I am eager to build a dynamic and internationally focused Design Lectorate that will engage with some of the most urgent issues in design today.”
With more than two decades of experience in design education, and a long-held interest in the enriching contribution of research in, and about, design, Twemlow is well placed help to nurture and refine the practice and culture of design research at KABK, Leiden University, and beyond.
Twemlow has a PhD from the History of Design program run by the Victoria & Albert Museum and Royal College of Art in London, and recently published Sifting the Trash: A History of Design Criticism (MIT Press, 2017). She is a frequent speaker and juror for conferences and competitions in the field of design and writes regularly for numerous international publications.
Just like Lector Janneke Wesseling, who represents the visual arts, she will involve her own research area directly and indirectly in the education, research and positioning of the KABK.
Together with Janneke Wesseling, Alice Twemlow will play a role at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), a unique collaboration between the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University and the University of the Arts The Hague. ACPA offers composers, performing artists, visual artists and (graphic) designers the opportunity to perform research in and through artistic practice.
ACPA also offers education in the arts for Leiden University students, and provides academic electives for students of the University of the Arts The Hague.
Twemlow is also head of the Design Curating & Writing Master at Design Academy Eindhoven, a Visiting Professor at University of the Arts London, a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and participates in the Environmental Humanities Centre at VU University, and Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at UVA.
