The book Untold Stories. Women designers in Belgium (CFC-Éditions/Design Museum Brussels) is the first book to make the work of more than 50 women designers and makers active in Belgium between 1880 and 1980 accessible to a broad audience. Like the eponymous exhibition at the Design Museum Brussels, it represents only a first step in uncovering these objects, names, and histories—an invitation for further research.

So, what are the next steps towards a more feminist and inclusive history of design? What should be at the top of the research agenda in 2026? Where are the blind spots in the exhibition? What are key themes, research questions, or methodologies that can help bring more untold stories or unheard voices to the surface? And how can we put this into practice?

One year after the opening of the exhibition Untold Stories. Women designers in Belgium 1880-1980, the Design Museum Brussels and Javier Gimeno-Martinez, Katarina Serulus and Marjan Sterckx, co-curators of the exhibition and authors of the book, invite researchers to reflect together on this question.

About the speakers

• Leah Armstrong is Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow in design history and theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she leads the FWF funded project ʼProfessionalization and its discontents: Design, 1930-1980ʼ. Her first monograph “The Industrialized Designer: gender, identity and professionalisation in Britain and the United States, 1930-1980” was published in 2024 with Manchester University Press and aims to critically examine the heroic self-image of the white, male industrial designer that has dominated the field in both theory and practice. She is Reviews Editor for the Journal of Design History.
• Loraine Furter {she/i·elle/ան} is a graphic designer and researcher interested in hybrid publishing as a potential space where subversive intersectional feminist, decolonial, queer, crip and non-extractive approaches can be developed and shared. She co-founded the cyberfeminist collective Just For the Record, the gender bending typography research group Bye Bye Binary and the research Intersections of Care, weaving different approaches to empowerment, interdependence and accessibility. Loraine is currently finishing a PhD in the arts at Sint Lucas Antwerpen (KdG) / ARIA (University of Antwerp) developing tools and stories around subversive publishing practices — access·ories, guided fabulations, graph·ic novel{l}a…
• Javier Gimeno-Martínez is an associate professor of design history and theory at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam where he teaches in the MA Design Cultures and the BA Media, Kunst, Design en Architectuur. His research interest encompasses issues of national identity and displacement as related to design. His articles have been published in academic journals such as Journal of Design History, Design Issues, Design and Culture, The Burlington Magazine and Urban Studies. He is the author of the books “Design and National Identity” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) and “Design History and Culture. Methods and Approaches” (Routledge, 2025). He is a member of the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies.
• Apolline Malevez is an art historian and postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, where she is a member of the research group The Inside Story. Art & Interior 1750-1950 (ThIS). Her research project “Support Systems: the Hidden Labour behind Art Making (Belgium, 1880-1920)” explores relationships which enabled and sustained artists’ work and careers in late 19th century and early 20th century Belgium. With Bart Ooghe, Jonas Roelens and Thijs Dekeukeleire, she is the co-curator of the exhibition Queer Belgian Art (1400-1950), which will take place at the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent in 2027. Her work has been published in journals such as Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide and Dix-Neuf.
• Katarina Serulus is an independent researcher and curator. Her research interests include national discourses, gender, transnational networks, club culture and non-disciplinary practices in the field of design, architecture and visual culture. She is the author of “Design & Politics: The Public Promotion of Industrial Design in Postwar Belgium (1950-1986)” (Leuven University Press, 2018). In 2020 she initiated as project manager at the Flanders Architecture Institute in Antwerp the project Wiki Women Design. Serulus curated several design exhibitions. She was the curator of the exhibition Panorama. A History of Modern Design in Belgium (Design Museum Brussels, 2017) and Designing the Night. Graphic Design and Belgian Club Culture 1970-2000 (Design Museum Brussels, 2019). She co-curated together with Cat Rossi and Jochen Eisenbrand Night Fever. Designing Club Culture 1960 to today (Vitra Design Museum, 2018-2022).
• Marjan Sterckx is Professor of Art History at the University of Ghent, where she is the founding director of the research group The Inside Story: Art & Interior 1750-1950 (ThIS). She lectures on the histories of interior design and nineteenth-century art and, together with ThIS, organizes the annual Studiedag Historisch Interieur & Design in Ghent. Marjan is co-editor of the journal Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design. Her research, which she communicates through publications and exhibition curation, explores the intersections between art, gender, and space, both public and domestic, between 1750 and 1950.

Practical information

Where: Design Museum Brussels

When: 06.11.2025, from 19:00 to 21:00

Duration: 2h

Language: EN

Price: Free, registration is required

Information: [email protected] / +32 2 669 49 21