Tania Messell is a design historian whose research focuses on design professionalisation, design and internationalism and design for development in the long twentieth century. She currently investigates the intersections of design and emergency relief between in the 1970s as part of the international research project ‘Governing Through Design’. Her research aims to trace the imaginaries, moral rationalities, and socio-economic forces that have underpinned such practices, whilst mapping their intended and unintended politics and links with the current ‘innovation turn’ in humanitarian spheres. Author of several peer-reviewed publications, she is also the co-editor of “International Design Organisations: Histories, Legacies, Values” published by Bloomsbury (2022).

INTERNATIONAL PEER-REVIEWED SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS

Messell, Tania. 'Globalization and Design Institutionalization: ICSID’s XIth Congress and the Formation of ALADI, 1979’. Journal of Design History, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2019).

Messell, Tania. Review of Designing Modern Norway: A History of Design Discourse by Kjetil Fallan. Routledge, 2016. In: Kunst og Kultur, Vol. 100, No. 3 (2017).

BOOKS

Messell, Tania, et al. (Eds). International Design Organisations: Histories, Legacies, Values. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.

BOOK CHAPTERS

Messell, Tania. ‘Designing for Disaster: The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design and the League of Red Cross Societies (1971–1979)’. In: Sarah Lichtman and Jilly Traganou (Eds). Design & Displacement. Routledge, forthcoming.

Messell, Tania. ‘International Design Organisations and Emigré Identity: Peter Muller-Munk and American Representation in ICSID, 1950-1967’. In: Jeremy Aynsley, Alison Clarke and Tania Messell (Eds). International Design Organisations: Histories, Legacies, Values. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.

Messell, Tania. ‘ICSID, Development, and Environmental Concerns: 1970s– 1980s’. In: Claudia Mareis and Nina Paim (Eds). Beyond Change: Imagining Design Beyond Precarity, Coloniality, and Patriarchy. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020.

Messell, Tania. ‘Contested Development: ICSID’s Design Aid and Environmental Policy in the 1970s’. In: Kjetil Fallan (Ed). The Culture of Nature in the History of Design. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.

PEER-REVIEWED CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Messell, Tania. 2016. ‘Design Across Borders: The Establishment of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) 1957-1963’. In: Wendy Siuy Wong, Yuko Kikuchi and Tingyi Lin (Eds). Making Trans/National Contemporary Design History. Conference of the International Committee for Design History & Design Studies. Sao Paulo: Blucher, 2016.

Messell, Tania. 2016. 'International Norms and Local Design Research: ICSID and the Promotion of Industrial Design in Latin America, 1970-1979'. In: Peter Lloyd and Erik Bohemia (Eds). Proceedings of DRS2016: Design + Research + Society - Future-Focused Thinking, Volume VII, DOI 10.21606/drs.2016.

CONFERENCE PAPERS

‘Design towards Disaster Relief: ICSID and the League of Red Cross Societies (1971-1979)’, Design History Society Annual Conference, Parsons School of Design, New York, September 2018.

'ICSID, Development and Environmental Concerns, 1970-1980s', Swiss Design Network Summit, FHNW Academy of Art and Design Basel, Basel, March 2018.

'ICSID, Development, and Environmental Discourse, 1970-1980', Design History Society Annual Conference, University of Oslo, Oslo, September 2017.

‘Design Across Borders: The Establishment of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) 1957-1963’, International Conference on Design History and Design Studies (ICDHS), National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, October 2016.

‘International Norms and Local Design Research: ICSID and the Promotion of Industrial Design in Latin America, 1970-1979’, Design Research Society Conference ‘Design + Research + Society: Future- Focused Thinking’. University of Brighton, Brighton, June 2016.

‘Design Across Borders: The Establishment of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) 1957-1963’, 'Utopias' 10^th Annual, International, Interdisciplinary Conference by the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE), University of Brighton, Brighton, September 2015.

‘Promoting Industrial Design to the Peripheries: ICSID and the “Industrial Design and Human Development” Congress in Mexico, 1979’, Postgraduate Design History Society (PDHS) Symposium ‘Ten: History of Design and Material Culture Postgraduate Symposium’, University of Brighton, Brighton, June 2015.

‘From Local to Global and Back: Tensions and Overlaps in the Study of ICSID’, ‘Design History in Practice: DHS Symposium and PhD Workshop’, University of Oslo, Oslo, June 2015.