Alex Todd

Alex J Todd is a historian of art and design. His research is concerned with the ways in which practices of art and design articulate shifting conceptions of political action and subjectivity. Currently, Alex is working on a project that examines the impact of decentralisation and political autonomy on the modalities of socially-engaged practices of art and design in 1980s Europe. Alex completed his Techne-funded PhD at the University of Brighton, where his research focused on the political practice of the Dutch graphic design collective Wild Plakken.

Alex is currently the Teaching and Learning Officer of the Design History Society and has previously taught at the University of Portsmouth, the University of Brighton, and the University for the Creative Arts. His writing can be found in the Journal for Design History, Eye, History Today, and Bloomsbury Design Library.

Ph.D., University of Brighton
M.A., Royal College of Art
B.A., University for the Creative Arts

(Forthcoming) Conference panel, “Practice as Position: Art, Design, and the Politics of Making”, CAA 115, New York, February 2027.

Review, “Turning Revolt into Style: The Process and Practice of Punk Graphic Design” by Russ Bestley, Journal of Design History, 2026.

Conference panel (co-organiser and co-chair with Dr Harriet Atkinson), “Design Activism as Repetition, Reconstruction, and Reinvention”, CAA 114, Chicago, February 2026.

Conference paper, “Wild Plakken, the Bolshuis, and Amsterdam as a Politicising Machine”, Everyday Resistance, University of Brighton, November 2025.

Conference paper, “Overlaps and Erasures: Wild Plakken and the Anti-Apartheid Movement”, For the Sake of Creative Freedom: Graphic Design for the Cultural Sector, Bern Academy of the Arts, December 2023.