Alex Todd

Alex J. Todd is a historian of art and design, focusing in particular on their capacity as modes of social and political action. His current research focuses on the conceptions of autonomy in politically-engaged art and design practices between 1975 and 1995, paying particular attention to the antagonistic role such practices played in challenging the discourses of neocolonialism and neoliberalism throughout the long 1980s.

Alex is currently the Student 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.