Joanna Norman

Since 2018 I have led the V&A Research Institute, and since 2021 the expanded VARI, NAL and Archives teams, with responsibility for leading the research strategy, activities and collections across the V&A family of sites. Much of my career has been curatorial: following a stint as a Museum Assistant in Prints & Drawings at the British Museum, I joined the V&A in 2005 as Assistant Curator to work on the 2009 exhibition Baroque 1620-1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence. I co-curated Treasures from Budapest at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2010, was project curator for the Europe 1600–1815 Galleries at the V&A (2015) and lead curator for the Scottish Design Galleries at V&A Dundee (2018), as well as researching and coordinating the V&A / BBC4 collaboration Handmade in Britain (2011–2). Most recently I was part of the curatorial team for the 2023 display Between Two Worlds: Francis Williams and Vanley Burke.

My research interests lie principally in early modern Italy and France, ranging from theatre and performance histories to furniture design and making. I also work on histories of collecting and display: I am currently working on the former library of the 19th-century French collector Eugène Piot, and on the collecting, display and rethinking of so-called ‘period rooms’. My involvement in collaborative research projects regularly takes me into other fields, including sustainable fashion, through the LCF-led Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology project, and machine learning through the Towards a National Collection: Deep Discoveries project led by The National Archives. Since 2022 I have been Principal Investigator for a pilot programme of Early Career Research Fellowships in Cultural and Heritage Institutions, leading on the development and delivery of an innovative programme of training and development for a cohort of early career fellows based in cultural and heritage organisations like the V&A.

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, co-chair of the Independent Research Organisation Consortium, a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and the UKRI Future Leaders Fellow Review College. I also serve on the Comitato Scientifico for the Centro Conservazione e Restauro ‘La Venaria Reale’ and for the Dottorato in Studi Museali e Patrimonio at the University of Turin.

Publications

‘Soap’, Pandemic Objects, edited by Brendan Cormier (AA Publications, 2024)

‘In public and in private: a study of performance in Baroque Rome’, in Making Space for Festival, edited by JR Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Routledge, 2019)

The Story of Scottish Design (co-edited with Philip Long), Thames & Hudson, 2018

‘Understanding and interpreting La Tournerie’ and ‘Venetian-Ottoman battles on a table’ in Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption, volume 4, issues 2-3 (July – November 2017)

Handmade in Britain, V&A Publishing, 2012