Johanna Agerman Ross MA
Title
Honorary Doctor
Person Type
Honorary
Born and raised in Sweden, Johanna Agerman Ross MA moved to London in the late 1990s on a scholarship to attend the Swedish School in Barnes. She went on to study fashion promotion at London College of Fashion and later received a postgraduate degree in History of Design from the Royal College of Art. For a brief period, she taught as a Visiting Lecturer at both the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins.
In 2008, she was appointed Deputy Editor at the all-encompassing design publication Icon Magazine, where she became Acting Editor before leaving in 2011. Soon after, she founded the biannual design journal Disegno Publications, serving as both Editor-in-Chief and Director.
In 2016, Johanna was appointed curator of the 20th Century and Contemporary Furniture and Product Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), where she also co-curated the permanent gallery Design 1900–Now. Her work frequently explores how design overlaps with and reflects pressing societal issues. During her time at the V&A, she curated the touring exhibition Plastics: Remaking Our World and helped launch Make Good: Rethinking Material Futures—a research programme that invites practitioners from diverse design disciplines to explore renewable natural materials.
In recent years, she has led the development of a new permanent gallery for 20th-century and contemporary design and craft at Gothenburg’s Röhsska Museum. Since 2023, she has served as Chief Curator at the Design Museum in London, playing a pivotal role in shaping its exhibitions.