Dr Grace Lees-Maffei is Professor of Design History at the University of Hertfordshire, where she directs DHeritage, the Professional Doctorate in Heritage. She is Chair of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Design History, published by Oxford University Press for the Design History Society, and Founding Series Co-Editor of Bloomsbury’s book series Cultural Histories of Design. Prof Lees-Maffei has thirty years’ experience as a teacher and examiner at all levels of higher education from museum eduction and foundation art and design, to BA Hons, MA, PhD and professional doctorates. Throughout the past three decades, Grace has published extensively. Her areas of expertise are design history, heritage studies, cultural history, domesticity, national identity and globalisation, the mediation of design through channels such as advertising, corporate literature and domestic advice, and historiography and methodology in design history. As well as numerous articles, Grace is author of Design at Home: Domestic Advice Books in Britain and the USA since 1945 (Routledge 2014) and co-author of Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context (Bloomsbury 2019). She is editor of Writing Design: Words and Objects (Bloomsbury 2012) and Iconic Designs: 50 Stories about 50 Things (Bloomsbury 2014). With Prof Rebecca Houze, Grace co-edited The Design History Reader (Bloomsbury 2010, revised and expanded second edition 2025) and Design and Heritage: The Construction of Identity and Belonging (Routledge 2022). With Prof Kjetil Fallan, Grace has co-edited Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization (Berghahn 2018) and Made in Italy: Rethinking a Century of Italian Design (Bloomsbury 2014). Professor Lees-Maffei is currently writing The Hand Book: A Design History of and through the Hand (forthcoming, The MIT Press).