Dr Lisa Godson
BA 1994, MA 1998, PhD 2008
LecturerLisa Godson is a cultural historian and Programme Leader of the MA Design History and Material Culture at NCAD, a unique postgraduate programme run in partnership with the National Museum of Ireland. Her research interests include the material culture of ritual, ‘tropical’ modern architecture in West Africa, the history of medical devices and the material culture of Catholicism. She studied History of Art at Trinity College Dublin and History of Design at the Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum, London (MA, PhD).
Recent books include Uniform. Clothing and Discipline in the Modern World (Bloomsbury: 2019 co-edited with Jane Tynan) and Modern Religious Architecture in Germany, Ireland and Beyond. Influence, Process and Afterlife since 1945 (Bloomsbury: 2019 co-edited with Kathleen James-Chakraborty), Making 1916: Material and Visual culture of the Easter Rising (Liverpool University Press: 2015, co-edited with Joanna Bruck); Design learning in an age of austerity (Cumulus: 2015).
She has published across a range of journals including Journal of Victorian Culture, Parse Journal of Artistic Research, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Irish Geography, Journal of Design History, Design and Culture, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Material Religion and Architectural Review as well as catalogue and monograph essays for artists and architects including Orla Barry and Ryan Kennihan.
Godson often collaborates with cultural institutions, curating and organising joint initiatives with the Irish Architecture Foundation, the Little Museum of Dublin, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the National Museum of Ireland. Her collaborations with creative practitioners include the award-winning feature-length documentary Build Something Modern (Still Films), based on her concept and research on modernist architecture in Africa, as research collaborator with artists Jesse Jones and Sarah Browne on their major Artangel/Create/Arts Council 2016 national commission In the Shadow of the State and with Jones on the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2017).
Godson was recently appointed to the historical studies sub-committee of the Royal Irish Academy and as Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Architecture, University College Dublin. She was perviously on the Board of the Irish Architecture Foundation and a Trustee of the Design History Society. She is a researcher on the project 100 Years of Self-Determination at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Exhibitions
2018
136 Hectres: Urban Material Culture in Dublin 8 (NCAD Gallery, co-curator)
Opening procession, EVA Art Biennale, Limerick (research advisor)
2017
Tremble, Tremble Jesse Jones at the Irish National Pavilion, Venice Biennale of Art (research collaborator)
Grit, Grandeur and One Euro Bananas: Design and Material Culture in Dublin 1 exhibition of NCAD/UCD MA/MFA/M.Arch. research, Irish Architecture Foundation (co-curator)
2016
In the Shadow of the State Jesse Jones and Sarah Browne (research collaborator for year-long Arts Council/Create/Artangel art project, funded as one of the 15 national projects for the centenary of the 1916 Rising)
The Truncheon and the Speculum Liverpool Biennale (co-presenter of live broadcast)
The Secret Lives of Objects: Hidden Stories of Design Little Museum of Dublin, April 2015. A project undertaken by the MA Design History and Material Culture at NCAD and funded by Year of Irish Design 2015. This work also resulted in a symposium (April 2015) and publication edited by Lisa Godson.
Conferences Organised
2018
Film and Design in Close-Up National College of Art & Design. One-day public symposium in collaboration with the Audi Dublin International Film Festival
2016
Making Memory: Visual and Material Cultures of Commemoration in Ireland since 1800 National Gallery of Ireland. Three-day conference (sole convenor), funded by Irish Research Council
Images and Objects of a Foundation Myth: the Irish State and Public Memory National Gallery of Ireland ESB Centre for the study of Irish Art/LAB Gallery. One-day public symposium
2015
The Secret Lives of Objects Little Museum of Dublin. One-day public symposium on research into material culture and the history of Dublin
2014
Modern Sacred Architecture in Germany and Ireland Newman House, Dublin, Oct. 9-11. Two-day conference, co-organised with School of Art History and Cultural Policy, UCD
2013
Making 1916, the Visual and Material Culture of the Easter Rising Wood Quay Venue, April 25-6. Two-day conference, co-organised with School of Archaeology, UCD
2012
Illustrated books and imagining the city 1750-1900 National Library of Ireland. One-day public symposium, co-organised with School of Art History and Cultural Policy, UCD
2012
Revisiting the 1932 Eucharistic Congress: Ireland’s family reunion, the material culture of spectacle, and the religious imagination Newman House, September 28. One-day public symposium, co-organised with School of History, UCD
2011/12
Object Matters: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Material Culture Monthly public seminar series, co-organised with School of Archaeology, UCD
2011
Same Difference: Material Cultures of Reproduction at the Association of Art Historians Annual Conference University of Warwick. Co-organised with Department of the History of Art, Trinity College Dublin
The Fourth Wall: on Film and Architecture Irish Film Institute. One-day symposium addressing historic filmic representations of architecture. Co-organised with Irish Film Institute, Irish Architecture Foundation and School of Architecture, UCD
Dublin Sean agus Nua Irish Film Institute. Public screening programme of films on the theme of attitudes to Dublin’s urban fabric at a time of rapid structural change c.1967-75. Co-curated with Irish Film Archive
2010
arts research: publics and purposes. Various venues, Dublin. Five-day programme of events, symposia, presentations, performances, screenings and exhibitions on the public role of arts research and cultural policy. Co-organised with GradCAM colleagues
Books Edited
2019
Understanding Uniform: Clothing and Discipline in the Modern World (co-editor with Jane Tynan, University of the Arts, London) (Bloomsbury UK)
Modern Religious Architecture in Germany, Ireland, and Beyond: Influence, Process and Afterlife since 1945 (co-editor with Kathleen James Chakraborty, UCD) (Bloomsbury USA)
2016
The Secret Lives of Objects (editor) collection of postgraduate research essays on material culture and the history of Dublin (Little Museum of Dublin)
2015
Making 1916: Material and Visual Culture of the Easter Rising (co-editor with Joanna Brück, UCD/University of Bristol) (Liverpool University Press)
Chapters, journal articles and recent reviews
2020
‘Spaces of the Devotional Revolution’ co-editor with Sarah Roddy, University of Manchester for Journal of Victorian Culture, (24), 4
2019
‘Ireland's Tropical Modernists: Pearse McKenna and the Kiltegan Fathers in Nigeria, 1947-1966’ in Godson and James-Chakraborty (eds.) Modern Religious Architecture in Germany, Ireland, and Beyond (Bloomsbury)
‘Nature of nurture: school buildings in Rosmuc and Inis Mór, Ireland, by Paul Dillon Architects’ in Architectural Review 1462 (June, 2019)
‘An Abcdery of Sheep’ in Orla Barry Shaved Rapunzel, Scheherazade and the Shearling Ram from Arcady [artist’s book]
‘Threads’ in Eamonn Doyle (Fondacion Mapfre, Madrid) [artist catalogue]
2018
‘`Thus Crucifixes Became the Norm': System, Affect, and Display in Post- Famine Catholicism’ in Fitzgerald and Corporaal (eds.) Visual and Material Culture of Famine (Liverpool University Press)
‘Environmental activism’ in Aikens, Grandas et. al. (eds.) The Long 1980s. Constellations of Art, Politics and Identity (Valiz and L'Internationale, Amsterdam)
Review of Mari Lending, Plaster Monuments: Architecture and the Power of Reproduction (Princeton University Press, 2017) Journal of Design History, 31 (3)
Review of Christine Casey, Making Magnificence: Architects, Stuccatori, and the Eighteenth-Century Interior (Yale University Press, 2017) Journal of Design History, 31 (1)
2017
‘A Finger, a Handbreath, a Span, a Foot’ in Jesse Jones: Tremble Tremble (Mousse, Milan) [catalogue for the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale]
‘Designing reproductive violence: the critical history of the Speculum’ in Borland et. al. (eds.) Design and Violence (MoMA and Science Gallery Dublin)
2016
‘Charting the material culture of the Devotional Revolution: the Advertising Register of the Irish Catholic Directory, 1838-98’ in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (116C)
‘1932: Skywriting’ in O’Toole (ed.) Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks (Royal Irish Academy)
2015
Multiple entries for The Bloomsbury Encyclopaedia of Design [3 vols.] (Bloomsbury, London)
‘Religion, ritual and the performance of memory in the Irish Free State’ in Godson and Brück (eds.) Making 1916: material and visual culture of the Easter Rising (Liverpool University Press)
2014
‘Design in Twentieth Century Ireland’ 10,000-word essay for the History of Art and Architecture of Ireland ([5-vols.] Yale University Press/Royal Irish Academy), vol. 5
‘Banners’ essay for the History of Art and Architecture of Ireland ([5-vols.] Yale University Press/Royal Irish Academy), vol. 2
2013
‘Visual and material culture in the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine in Irish Geography 46 (3)
Film
2011
Build Something Modern (Dirs: Paul Rowley and Nicky Gogan) Feature-length documentary based on my research about modernist architecture in Africa, c.1945-1975.
Devised concept and research. Cinematic premiere at Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. Listed as one of the top 5 Irish films of 2011 by the Irish Times.
Collaborators
Jane Tynan, Central St Martins University of the Arts London – Uniform: Body and Discipline in the Modern World
Jesse Jones (artist) – research collaborator, eg on Tremble Tremble at the Guggenheim Bilbao (2019) and the Venice Biennale Irish pavilion, 2017
Professor Kathleen James Chakraborty, UCD - Modern Sacred Architecture in Germany and Ireland - One iteration of this project was an international conference that addressed cross-currents between Irish and German modernist architecture, particularly in the sphere of sacred buildings (October 2014). A publication based on the conference proceedings, supported by seed funding from the UCD + NCAD alliance was published in 2019.
Joanna Brück, Reader in Archaeology and Head of Subject, University of Bristol – Object Matters This monthly seminar series in 2011/12 addressed interdisciplinary approaches to material culture and design and led to the conference (2013) and publication (2015) Making 1916: Material and Visual Culture of the Easter Rising.
Jesse Jones and Sarah Browne (artists), Artangel/Create Commission In the Shadow of the State Godson is research collaborator on this major new commission in relation to the role of the Nation State in the control and regulation of the female body; initial research was presented at ‘the voice emerges’ at Green Street Courthouse in April 2015, and further outputs include a publication in 2016.
Dublin City Council Arts Office/National Gallery of Ireland – 2016 commissions
Godson is working with the Lab (DCC’s contemporary art gallery), the National Gallery of Ireland and artists commissioned to produce work that responds to the centenary of the 1916 Rising.
Membership of boards
Irish Architecture Foundation (Director)
Little Museum of Dublin (advisor)
Darklight Festival (advisor)
Pivot Dublin (advisor)
Design History Society (Trustee)
Recent External Examining
Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum, London External examiner for MA History of Design (2019-21)
University of the Arts, Central Saint Martins, London External examiner for cultural studies component of BA Fashion, Textile and Jewellery design degrees (2013-15)
Trinity College Dublin External examiner for M.Phil in Irish Art (2010-13)
Past collaborations Include projects with ‘the food thing’, a collaborative creative project around the politics and economic conditions of food production (includes of the salt bitter sweet sea: a public banquet, supported by Dublin City Council Arts Office); the National Library of Ireland/UCD Art History (symposium: Illustrated Books and Imagining the City); UCD History (symposium: Revisiting the 1932 Eucharistic Congress); the Irish Architecture Foundation/UCD Architecture (symposium: the Fourth Wall: on Film and Architecture); the Irish Film Archive (co-curators on screening programme Dublin Sean agus Nua on attitudes to urban change in Dublin, 1965-75); Still Films (documentary feature Build Something Modern); GradCAM colleagues (co-convenors of five-day conference arts research: publics and purposes).
Current Supervision
Maeve Sookram - Modern Irish interiors, c.1950-1980
Michael Early - Ecclesiastical decoration c.1890-1930
Suzanne Freeman - Artefacts and replication in James Joyce’s Ulysses
Completed PhD Supervision
Caroline O’Brien - The material culture of costume at the Royal Canadian Ballet
Caoimhe McMahon - Into the Wild. A framework to facilitate in-context prototype evaluation in the later stages of new product development
Candace White - Building Typologies for Leisure and Transport in Ireland, 1920-1950
Macushla Baudis - Embroidery for Male Suiting in Lyon, 1780-1789: a Cultural Biography of the Designs in the National Museum of Ireland collection presented by J.H. Fitzhenry
Katharina Pfützner - Functionalist Industrial Design Practice in the German Democratic Republic
PhD Teaching
As NCAD Fellow at GradCAM (2009-13), Godson taught a comprehensive structured doctoral programme to c.40 PhD researchers, working in both classroom and one-to-one contexts.
