Dr Ruth Blacksell

  • Department Director of Postgraduate Taught Studies
  • Department Director of Teaching & Learning (Postgraduate Taught Studies)
  • Programme Director of MA Communication Design (MACD)
  • Pathway Lead, MACD: Book Design Pathway
  • Module Convenor, Core and Reflective Practice Masters modules
  • Tutor in practice and theory across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes (BA and MA); supervisor of undergraduate and postgraduate written assignments and dissertations (BA and MA); supervisor of doctoral dissertations

Office

Room B4, Typography & Graphic Communication, TOB2 (Building 21)

Building location

Whiteknights campus

Areas of interest

My areas of interest include: history, theory and practice of editorial and book design; unconventional, experimental and interdisciplinary approaches to editorial and book design (print, digital and hybrid); typographic engagement and acts of publishing in (and as) art practice; and cross-disciplinary examples that expand the vocabulary and contexts of editorial design. 
 
Related to these areas, I am interested in artefacts of production and modes of dispersion and distribution, as well as the broader social, theoretical and cultural contexts that both inform and root examples of practice.

Postgraduate supervision

I welcome opportunities to supervise doctoral research students in areas including (but not limited to) the history of editorial design and book design. I have a particular interest in topics that relate to artists’ publishing and unconventional or experimental engagements with form and context.

Collaborative supervision partnerships

In 2015, I secured a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) with Tate Library and Archive to investigate the forms, strategies and contexts of publishing in modern and contemporary art practice since the 1960s (*). I welcome further opportunities for collaborative supervision partnerships that align with my areas of interest and expertise.

Past and current supervision topics (selected)

  • Fortunato Depero and Depero futurista (the Bolted book) 1913–1927
  • Embodied iteration: the materiality of language in artists’ publishing (moving between library and archive collections) (*) Tate CDP
  • Georges Perec: walking and propositional map making
  • Book layout and design in unconventional printed novels: materiality and reading in the digital era
  • Off the grid: activating Belgian graphic design histories
  • The importance of nineteenth century magazines in poster collecting and exhibiting in the USA and UK

Teaching

I teach across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, with a particular focus on editorial and book design through practice, discourse, history, and theory.

At the Master’s level (for taught postgraduates) my role involves leadership in programme development and curriculum design. This includes the integration of research-led teaching; the use of collections and archives to support teaching and learning; the recruitment of, and responding to, a diverse student cohort; and the development of strategic partnerships with institutions and individuals who can support our specific interests.

Research projects

Research symposia

  • Experimental Publishing and New Archival Initiatives (January 2022). Conference co-organisation & chairing with Dr Lozana Rossenova. A public-facing online symposium event bringing together cross-university and independent research. Hosted by the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing at the University of Reading. 
  • Experimental Publishing and Alternative Networked Cultures (April 2021). Conference co-organisation & chairing with Dr Lozana Rossenova from London Southbank University’s Centre for the Study of the Networked Image and Rhizome (new media art) NYC. A public-facing online symposium event bringing together cross-university and independent research. Hosted by the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing at the University of Reading.
  • Architecture and the spaces of information, part 2 (September 2016). Conference co-organisation & chairing with Dr Stephen Walker. A one-day public-facing symposium event bringing together cross-university research. Hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. 
  • Architecture and the spaces of information, part 1 (September 2015). Conference co-organisation and chairing with Dr Stephen Walker from Sheffield University’s School of Architecture. A one-day public-facing symposium event bringing together cross-university research. Hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Scheduled to coincide with the exhibition, Everything is architecture: Bau Magazine from the 1960s and 70s (ICA’s Fox Reading Room). 
  • Art information: editorial strategies; text-based formats; publishing contexts (April 2014). Conference organisation and chairing. A one-day public-facing symposium event. Hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

Invited presentations and panel convening 

  • ‘Experimental Publishing: Alternative Networked Cultures & New Archival Initiatives’ (October 2025). Invited keynote lecture at the 2025 Typography Theory Practice conference. Convened by Fraser Muggeridge and hosted by Leeds Beckett University.
  • ‘Experimental Publishing: Networked Cultures, Archival Initiatives & Recursive Publics’ (June 2024). Panel Convening and conference paper delivery at the annual SHARP conference (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing). Hosted by the University of Reading.
  • ‘From book anatomy (form) to an expanded field (context): categories, order systems and the spaces of publishing’ (November 2018). Invited keynote paper at the conference The Anatomy of the Book. Hosted by RMIT University, Melbourne, at RMIT Europe in Barcelona. 
  • 'Reading Art-Language: The Publication in/as Art Practice' (October 2017). Invited keynote lecture at the conference Looking at Art-Language: Artists Magazines 1969–1985. Hosted by the University of York.
  • ‘Refusing cultural confinement: magazine art then and now’ (April 2016). Invited presentation paper at the Association of Art Historians (AAH) conference, within the session 'Art Magazines and Magazine Art'. Hosted by the University of Edinburgh. 
  • ‘Spaces of information’ (September 2016): Invited panel chairing and delivery of presentation paper at the Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference (CABC), New York. Invitation from Dr Stephen Bury, the Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian at the Frick Art Reference Library. 
  • Invited keynote lecture (December 2014) at a two-day public-facing symposium event, Typography as an Artistic Event since the 1960s (Typografie als künsterisches Ereignis seit den 1960er Jahren). Hosted by the University of the Arts, Bremen, Germany. 

Reviewing for publishers

  • Architecture and culture, the international peer-reviewed journal of the Architectural Humanities Research Association. Oxford: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Invited by the journal’s editor Igea Troiani (2018).
  • University of Toronto Press. Invited by Siobhan McMenemy, Commissioning Editor for Book History, Communication Studies & Design (2013 and 2014).

Editing journals

For a special issue of Architecture and culture, the international peer-reviewed journal of the Architectural Humanities Research Association. Oxford: Routledge, Taylor & Francis (co-editorship with Dr Stephen Walker, 2016).

Background

Prior to commencing my PhD and taking up my role in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, I worked as a typographic designer, specialising in print and exhibition design for museums and arts organisations. From 1996, I was Art Director of International Projects for Sotheby’s (London) before teaming up with Anne Odling-Smee in 2002 to form O-SB, a London-based design studio. My PhD research was funded full-time by a Concordat Scholarship from the British Library and was jointly supervised in the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield (my PhD was awarded in 2013). From 2016 to 2018, I was a part-time fixed-term Research Fellow at the University of Kingston (a position I held alongside my role at the University of Reading).

Academic qualifications

PhD, University of Sheffield (2013)
'Typography after Conceptual Art: a contribution to typographic discourse'.
Funded by a Concordat Scholarship from the British Library and jointly supervised in the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield

MA in Aesthetics and Art Theory, Middlesex University, London

BA (Hons) in Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading

Professional bodies/affiliations

External examiner (PhD examinations) at the Royal College of Art in 2023, and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) and the Royal Conservatory, School of Arts, University College Ghent, Belgium in 2024.

External examiner for MA Communication Design. Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton. Four year fixed-term appointment, January 2019 – January 2023.

Management Board Member of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre, The Centre for Book Cultures & Publishing at the University of Reading. From 2020 (ongoing).

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Awarded July 2018.

Research Fellow at the University of Kingston. Two year fixed-term appointment, 2016–2018.

Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP), Tate Library and Archive, 2015–2019.

Publications

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