Research Interests

Since I became the first professor of Design History in Denmark, I have investigated the histories of Danish and Nordic design with special interest in national ideals, understandings and institutions. Design schools and professional organisations are of specific interest, because design was a new profession evolving out of architecture and crafts. I have a close collaboration with design historians across the Nordic countries as Danish representative in Nordic Forum for Design History, hosted here at SDU.

My Danish postdoctoral thesis from is Fra Bayreuth til Bauhaus. Aarhus University Press 2012. It is a historical survey of the dream of the unification of arts and its role in the development of modern art forms, especially design and architecture. Abbr. version The Gesamtkunstwerk in Design and Architecture, Aarhus University Press 2021. The ideals of this unification of not only the arts, but also of art and society, have played a central role in the development of modern design and still showe up in total design and branding.

Curriculum

Professor, Dr.phil., PhD, MA History of Ideas & Art History

2012- Professor, Design Culture Studies, SDU

2010-13 Professor II, Oslo School of Architecture & Design, Norway

2007 Assoc. Prof, Design Culture Studies, SDU

2003-06 Ass. Prof, Theory & History, Aarhus School of Architecture

2001-03 Postdoc, Art History, Aarhus University, Carlsberg Foundation Fellowship

1996-99 PhD student, Art History, Aarhus University, The Styleless Style. Adolf Loos

Assignments

2025-            External assessor, New Carlsberg Foundation

2022-25       Member, Project Support Committee, Danish Art Foundation

2020             Chair, Research Council for Culture and Communication, Independent Research Foundation Denmark

2019-20        Member NOS-HS, Committee of Nordic Research Councils, Social Sciences and Humanities

2015-20        Member, Research Council for Culture and Communication, Independent Research Foundation Denmark

2014-            Danish representative, Nordic Forum for Design History

2007-18        Member, scientific panel, “Arkitektur N”, Norway

Projects

2026-29           PI of Made In Denmark. Production history as cultural heritage and sustainable literacy, Augustinus Foundation

2025                Visiting scholar, Material Ecologies of Design, PI Ingrid Halland & Kjetil Fallan, Center of Advanced Studies, Oslo

2024                 Fellow, Danish Academy in Rome

2024-25           History of Danish design culture, Carlsberg Foundation Monography Fellowship

2019-22           Nordic Design Cultures in Transformation, NOS-HS workshops, with Kjetil Fallan, University of Oslo, and Christina Zetterlund, Linneaus University

Reviewer for FCT (research council, Portugal), NOP-HS and The Israeli Science Foundation, Journal of Design History, Design & Culture, Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, Fashion Practice, Architecture & Culture, Cultura e Scienza del Colore, AIS/Design Storia e Ricerche, Nordisk Arkitekturforskning, Arkitektur N, Kunst & Kultur and Artifact

Research information

Books: 

”Nordic Design Cultures in Transformation, 1960-1980. Revolt and Resilience”, co-eds. Kjetil Fallan og Christina Zetterlund, New York & Abingdon: Routledge 2023/paperback 2024, open access 

”The Gesamtkunstwerk in Design and Architecture. From Bayreuth to Bauhaus”, Aarhus University Press 2021

”Design Culture: Objects and Approaches”, co-eds. Guy Julier, Mads Nygaard Folkmann, Hans-Christian Jensen & Niels Peter Skou, London: Bloomsbury 2019

”Designkulturanalyser”, medred. Toke Riis Ebbesen & Niels Peter Skou, Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag 2015

”Design as Gesamtkunstwerk. The art of transgression”, København: Rhodos 2012

Postdoctoral thesis ”Fra Bayreuth til Bauhaus. Gesamtkunstwerk’et og de moderne kunstformer”, Aarhus Universitetsforlag 2012 

Ph.d. thesis “Den stilløse stil. Adolf Loos”, Kunstakademiets Arkitektskoles Forlag, København 2002  (German version:  ”Der stillose Stil. Adolf Loos”, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2005) 

More recent papers etc :

‘Selling Time. Multiple temporalities in promotion of Danish design classics’, Journal of Design History 35/1 2022, 53-69, (co-author Hans-Christian Jensen)