Kate Trant

Biography

With an MA in History of Design from Middlesex University, and a background in publishing (Black Dog Publishing and Artifice books on architecture), I have extensive experience in telling stories about the creative arts. I was instrumental in delivering UAL's REF2021 impact case studies and currently working on REF2029. Regularly asked to write and edit texts across UAL for diverse purposes, I wrote the University's 2024 award-winning submission for The Queen’s Anniversary Prizes, celebrating the pioneering work of UAL's researchers in social and environmental sustainability in fashion. I develop ways in which UAL’s rich and complex research narratives can be described for different audiences, currently looking at the specifics of research impact in the creative arts. I provide cross-UAL impact work and support to researchers and academics, and have led training workshops for CCW, LCC and LCF.

My research interests include design history and material culture, gender and design, and the problematic relationship between automotive styling, planned obsolescence and product waste. With a focus on mid-20th-century American automotive design, particularly the mobilisation of gender at General Motors (GM), I investigate how gendered corporate approaches draw upon theories of desire, and how the cultural and ecological consequences of these embedded structures of obsolescence persist today.