What Does Work Look Like?

Tom Cubbin is a historian and educator at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design. He undertakes teaching and research into the cultural and environmental significance of craft and design at Campus Steneby in Dals Långed, located in the region of Dalsland.

Tom holds a PhD from the University of Sheffield and an MA in History of Design from the Royal Collage of Art in London, where he has also worked as a visiting lecturer in Critical and Historical Studies.T om has a background in Russian and Soviet history, and his book Soviet Critical Design (Bloomsbury, 2019) charts the development artistic design research in the late Soviet Union. Tom has written on diverse topics including sustainability and the role of craft in queer communities. Tom’s current research examines critical historiographies of how the urban gaze has subjugated certain forms of craft and design practice across diverse geographies.

Together with Dr. Karin Peterson, Tom has developed the BFA in Crafting Futures which engages innovative pedagogies of craft linking materials, place, ecology and technology.

In his previous roles, Tom worked closely with education in the BA and MA programmes in the Design Unit at HDK-Valand in Gothenburg, where he was responsible for introducing design studies to the curriculum. Tom has also worked as Head of Unit at HDK-Valand Campus Steneby.

Tom is a member of the PARSE working group, and is a board member of Halmens Hus, Sweden’s museum for straw craft. He also co-supervises Gustav Thane, who is undertaking a doctoral degree in craft.

Josefine Wikström is a critic and researcher living in Gothenburg. Her research focuses on dance and performance in contemporary art from art philosophical and historically materialist perspectives. She is the author of the book Practices of Relations in Task-Dance and the Event-Score: A Critique of performance (2021), Objects of Feminism (2017 together with Maija Timonen); Kritik av konstens frihet (2022 together with Gustav Strandberg and Kim West) and Autonomins Sken: Om Kalliasbreven och frågan om estetikens politik hos Friedrich Schiller (2024 together with Gustav Strandberg and Kim West). She has been published in journals such as Radical Philosophy, Third Text, Performance Research Journal and Texte Zur Kunst. She writes regular dance critique for Dagens Nyheter and serves as one of the editors of the experimental philosophy- and art- platform SITE Zones. She works as a senior lecturer in the theory and practice of contemporary performative arts at the Academy of Music and Drama, at Gothenburg University.