Vivien Chan

she/they
I am a design historian, educator, writer, and imagemaker based in the UK.I research design history and material culture in Hong Kong with a broad interest in design and the everyday. I teach illustration and design research at Nottingham Trent University and have guest lectured at the Royal College of Art, Kingston School of Art and Academy of Visual Art at Baptist University Hong Kong.I am also a History Workshop Editorial Fellow 2023-2025, and an Honorary Fellow at the Raphael Samuel History Centre, Birkbeck, University of London.

You can find me on the internet
or you can email me at vc[at]vivienchan.co.uk
︎ ︎ ︎ ︎

portrait by Rachel Meng Man, 2023

Selected articles I’ve written:
Ad Hoc Juk, CONGEE Zine, August 2023, in collaboration with artist Alastair Kwan and F.A.T. Studio

Fortified Gazette, 13th- 17th September 2022, peeling prawns; repetoires and gifts; here, a Nutrigrain bar; gravy; fervour/flavour

Fortified Issue 003, ‘Sweet treats & school puds’, July 2022

Urban History, April 2022,‘Markets made modular:constructing the modern ‘wet’ market in Hong Kong’s public housing estates’︎ Shortlisted on the Hong Kong Studies IBP 2023

Report, Centre for Global Design History,June 2021, Report- Design Archives in Asia Symposium

Geofictions: Work in Progress, ed. Zara Arshad, February 2021Interviewing Alvin Li and Junyuan Feng, curators of Liquid Ground

Design History Society, December 2018, Design and Displacement (1)

--, June 2018, Hearing Design History

--, November 2017, Making and Unmaking the Environment (3)

--, August 2017, Thoughts on Three Czech Modernist Villas

daikon* Winter 2018, Issue 4, Across the table: researching identity through food

Riposte (online) 2018, XING: An Interview with Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee

Design China, May 2016, More on China Design Centre

You can hear me speak on these podcasts/videos:
The last of Hong Kong’s street food rebels, SCMP

Reverberations by Zara Arshad

Women read

Recent lectures, conferences and workshops:
Foodscaping Asia panel, ICAS 13 Crossways of Knowledge, Surabaya, Indonesia, July 2024 (forthcoming)

dressing eating living moving workshop (co-convenor), ICAS 13 Crossways of Knowledge, Surabaya, Indonesia, July 2024 (forthcoming)

‘Exhibiting Spatial Histories: Design History and Cross-cultural Spatial Narratives of Hong Kong' panel (co-convenor), Workshop on Hong Kong Cultures, Arts and Languages in the UK, University of Sheffield, June 2024 (forthcoming)

‘The Pitch and the Module: hawkers and markets in designing post-war Hong Kong's New Towns public housing estates’, Universität Wien, April 2024 (forthcoming)

‘Hidden Histories’ workshop, University of Nottingham, March 2024

University of Nottingham Humanities delegation, University of Adelaide, November 2023

'Everyday rituals in the British Empire and after' workshop, University of Nottingham, June 2023

Introduction to Girl’s School by Lee Mimi, Queer East, Broadway Cinema, Nottingham, November 2022

Disclosing Architecture, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam,November 2022

‘Archival Interference: Counter-archives and Design History in Asia’, Archival Interactions Symposium, DAS Amsterdam, June 2022

'Making the modern wet market in Hong Kong’s New Towns Public Housing Estates:order consumption and the materiality of ‘wetness’’, Oxford University Hong Kong Scholars Association, November 2021

‘Reconstructing Design Archives: Tracing Alternative Narratives of Design History' panel (co-convenor), Memory Full, Design History Society Annual Conference, Academy of Art and Design Basel, September 2021

'Propaganda and the art of Labour in Hong Kong Protest' roundtable (invited panellist), Media and Hong Kong Protests, Queen Mary University of London, December 2019

'Traversing Boundaries: Spatial and Material Narratives of Twentieth-century Hong Kong' (convenor), Joint East Asian Studies Conference, University of Edinburgh, September 2019

International History of East Asia Seminar Oxford, Trinity Term, June 2019

All Roads Lead to Hong Kong, Hong Kong History Project/HKU Conference, HKU, June 2019

Interdisciplinary Lunchtime Seminar Series, Hong Kong Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, May 2019

Design and Displacement, Design History Society Annual Conference, Cooper Hewitt/Parsons New York, September 2018

Scripts, print and letterform in global contexts, Centre for Print History and Culture, Birmingham City University, June 2018