Eleanor Herring
Eleanor Herring
- Lecturer
- Job Title
- Lecturer
- School or Academic Area
- School of Design
- School or Academic Area Supervised for
- School of Design
- E.Herring@gsa.ac.uk
- Professional Address
- Barnes Building 9-11 West Graham St, Glasgow G4 9LE
Biography
Dr Eleanor Herring is a Lecturer in the department of Design, History and Theory in the School of Design. Having originally trained in Textile Design, Eleanor holds an MA (Distinction) in the History of Design from the Royal College of Art/Victoria and Albert Museum and a PhD in Cultural Studies and Architectural History from the University of Edinburgh. Eleanor has worked in Higher Education since 2006, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate design history at a variety of institutions in the UK, as well as in Singapore, Germany and the Netherlands. Eleanor’s research centres around the design politics of the everyday, the designed environment and government-led design. Her book Street Furniture Design was published by Bloomsbury in 2016. She recently published ‘Designing a Level Playing Field’ about the Scottish Baby Box (Design and Culture 2025). Eleanor is currently developing several collaborative community projects about the uses and design of public space.
Research Interests
Urban design and the politics of space; street furniture; authorless and anonymous design; the everyday; design policy; government design; material culture; active travel, cycling and design for movement; design and social justice; design and motherhood.
Grants
2005-7 RCA/V&A History of Design Scholarship
2005 Hope Scott Trust Scholarship
2010-13 AHRC Doctoral Bursary
2010-18 GSA Research Development Fund (various)
2023 Design History Society Day Symposium Grant
PGR Supervision Interests
Urban design; politics of space; street furniture; authorless and anonymous design; the everyday; design policy; British government design; material culture; active travel, cycling and design for movement; design and social justice; regeneration; design and motherhood.
Current PGR Students
Sinan Wang 'The Production and Appropriation of Neoliberal Urban Space: A Lefebvrian Study of Street, Design and Governance' (working title).
Yue Hu 'Designing for Behaviour Change: Using Visual Design to Encourage Desktop Computer Shutdown at The Glasgow School of Art'
Former PGR Students
Mandy McIntosh - 'Springburn Sculpture Park: The Re-socialisation of Orphaned Sculptures'.
Teaching
Undergraduate teaching of Design History and Theory to BA (Hons) students at all year levels, including the Year 1 course 'Designed Objects: Ideas, Contexts, Histories'; the Y2 course 'Worlds and Words of Design'; the Y3 course 'Concepts & Territories of Design'; and Year 4 supervision. Joint course coordinator for Y2 DHT/Communication Design. Course coordinator for DHT Y3. Delivery of The Politics of Space (Y3). Postgraduate teaching of the cross-disciplinary elective course, Material Cultures in Creative Research. PhD supervision.
Latest Additions
- Herring, Eleanor (2025) Designing a level playing field: The design politics of the baby box in Scotland. Design and Culture: The Journal of the Design Studies Forum, 17 (2). pp. 135-161. ISSN 1754-7075; eISSN 1754-7083
- Herring, Eleanor (2024) Historicism / Gothic revival; Aestheticism; Streetscape; Urban Design. In: The Design Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained. DK. ISBN 9780241257074
- Herring, Eleanor (2023) Designs on Democracy, Architecture and the Public in Inter-War London, Neal Shashore, Oxford University press, 2022 [Book review]. Journal of Design History, 2023. epad032. ISSN 0952-4649
- Herring, Eleanor (2018) Designing from the Centre: State-sponsored Design in Britain and Politically Driven Decision-making. In: Back to the Future. The Future in the Past. Universitat de Barcelona, pp. 614-618. ISBN 978-84-9168-156-4
- Herring, Eleanor (2016) Street Furniture Design: Contesting Modernism in Post-War Britain. Bloomsbury, London. ISBN 9781474245616
- Herring, Eleanor (2016) Carpentry and Crisis. Crafts: The Magazine for Contemporary Craft (261). pp. 52-57. ISSN 0306-610X
- Herring, Eleanor (2016) Unpicking the design process. Eye Magazine, 23 (92).
- Herring, Eleanor (2016) 'Street Furniture: Improving the Designed Environment?' in 'Designed to Improve? Buildings, interventions and the makings of the 'social' in interdisciplinary urban practices' (Special Feature). City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 20 (1-2). ISSN 1360-4813
- Herring, Eleanor (2014) Street Furniture and the Nation State: A Global Process. In: A Matter of Design: Making Society through Science and Technology. Proceedings of the 5th STS Italia Conference 2014. STS Italia Publishing, pp. 127-136. ISBN 978-90-78146-05-6
- Herring, Eleanor (2014) Joining the Modern World: A study of Street Furniture Design in Postwar Britain. In: Tradition, Transition, Trajectories: Major or Minor Influences? Proceedings of the 9th conference of the International Committee of Design History and Design Studies. Universidade de Aveiro Editora, Aveiro, pp. 551-556.
