Tom Cubbin

Tom Cubbin is a design historian whose work explores the role of making in material cultures of sex. Tom’s research project, entitled ‘Crafting Desire: An International Design History of Gay Fetish Making,’ is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2019-2021). The project uses design historical methods to explore what the development and mediation of skills, aesthetics, concepts and images in the gay fetish world can tell us about broader changes in the socio-economic status of gay men in Europe and North America since the 1960s. More information about the project is available here.

Tom’s previous work examined histories of critical artistic design practice in the Soviet Union, which culminated in a monograph entitled Soviet Critical Design: Senezh Studio and the Communist Surround (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).

Since 2016, Tom has worked closely with education in the BA and MA programmes in design at HDK, and has been primarily responsible for implementing design studies within the curriculum.

Tom holds a PhD from the University of Sheffield, and an MA in History of Design from the Royal College of Art in London, where he has also worked as a visiting lecturer in the school of Critical and Historical Studies.