Dr Jesse O'Neill

Biography

Dr. Jesse O'Neill is Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Interior Design at the Chelsea College of Arts. He has worked in higher education since 2007, having previously taught at the Glasgow School of Art, the Singapore Institute of Technology, the University of Technology Sydney, and the University of New South Wales. He was Lee Kong Chian Research Fellow at the National Library Board of Singapore, and Merewether Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and is currently a convenor for the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

As a design historian, Jesse's work has focused on the emergence of design cultures in British colonial contexts in Southeast Asia and Australia. He has written on printing practices and cultures, the promotion of modernisation for the built environment in the popular press and political rhetoric, and designs for leisure and national identity construction. His recent publications include work on the rhetoric of late twentieth century Garden City planning, and the design of recreational swimming environments in Singapore. Jesse's current research focuses on ideas of transnational design history, asking questions of how design moves across constructed borders. His work has been published in Design Issues, the Architectural Theory Review, and books on design theory by Routledge and Bloomsbury. Jesse presents regularly at the conferences of the Design History Society and the ICDHS, and is a peer reviewer for the Journal of Design History.

Jesse received his training in multidisciplinary design, studying combinations of interior, furniture and graphic design. In his professional work, he focused on design for exhibitions, with work for clients including the Australian Museum, the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, Yuill|Crowley Gallery, Parramatta Artists' Studios, and the Blacktown Arts Centre.