Joana Albernaz Delgado
PhD Student, V&A / RCA History of Design Programme
joana.delgado@network.rca.ac.uk
There’s Somebody at the Door: a sonic history of domestic thresholds and identities through the design and material culture of the doorbell, 1950-2023
I am a design historian and researcher devoted to mixed-media methodologies. I am interested in the everyday and interdisciplinary connections between different scales of design, from the city to the object. A former lawyer, I have a MA from the V&A / RCA History of Design Programme. My MA dissertation, which was awarded a distinction, investigated the history of museum seating in the V&A’s Raphael Cartoon Court between 1865 and 2021.
I am currently a PhD student on the V&A / RCA History of Design Programme and a recipient of a London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP) Studentship as of 2023/2024. My doctoral research focuses on the history of doorbells and the role of the sonic in design history. My supervisors are Dr Louise Purbrick and Dr Josie Kane, RCA.
I was awarded the V&A/RCA History of Design MA Clive Wainwright Memorial Prize for academic excellence in 2020-2021. I also won the Design History Society’s Design Writing Prize in 2022.
Select publications, presentations and other works
Review Essay: ‘A Rhapsody of Chairs’, Journal of Design History, December 2023
‘Designing Transience: A Dérive on Pencils’, paper presented at the Design History Society Annual Conference, ‘Design and Transience’, Izmir Institute of Technology, Izmir, Turkey, 2022
‘“Full Musical Honours”: the 1950s Friedland Westminster Door Chime’, paper presented at the symposium Designing the Domestic: Innovation in the Home, Design History Society, 2023
Sound Thieves: Four Urban Miniatures, sound piece, RCA PhD Research Biennale 2023, June 2023
Series of ten essays on invisible objects of everyday life for Observador, 2022-2023