Subject Tutor, Contextual Studies 

Dr Rosamund Lily West is a historian, researcher and curator. She leads Contextual Studies at KLC School of Design and is also a Research Fellow at the Survey of London at the Bartlett School of Architecture.  Previously, she was a Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester and has also taught history and theory on the Interior Design course at Chelsea College of Arts. She was awarded her PhD by Kingston University for her thesis, ‘’Concrete citizens’: Sculptures for the London County Council’s Housing Schemes, 1949-1965.

Before entering academia, Rosamund worked in museums for 15 years, holding curatorial positions at London Transport Museum, Kingston Museum and as Paul Mellon Research Curator at the Royal Society of Sculptors. Her museum career informs her object-based approach to teaching and she has worked with a wide range of collections ranging from furniture to firearms. She has also lectured and published on contemporary collecting and ethics within museums. She is passionate about public history and has appeared on UKTV’s ‘Secrets of the London Underground’, the Imperial War Museum’s YouTube channel, BBC Radio 4 and several podcasts. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an ECR advisory board member of the Centre for the History of People, Place and Community at the Institute of Historical Research. She also leads architectural walking tours for Open City.

Her research interests are informed by her academic research and museum career and include working-class histories and representation; decolonisation; traumatic histories; the histories of emotions and the history of senses. In June 2026, she co-organised the inter-disciplinary conference ‘Senses Matter: the Value of Sensory Approaches to the Domestic Sphere’, held at KLC School of Design. She is also the co-founder of the Anglo-German Research Group.