Professor Margaret Maile Petty

Professor Margaret Maile Petty

Pro Vice-Chancellor, College of Creative Arts

Prof Margaret Maile Petty has a strong background of serving in academic leadership roles and developing and managing a wide spectrum of impactful initiatives. Through her commitment to organisational innovation and excellence in the tertiary sector she has reimagined curriculum, created student entrepreneurship programs and opportunities, and established transdisciplinary research groups and partnerships. Each of these initiatives have linked to larger organisational shifts and a recalibration of the way in which universities engage with both internal and external stakeholders, and the customer experience they provide. Keenly aware of such demands, she brings a diverse skill set and capacity for lateral thinking to her role as a senior academic leader and agent for positive change.

Alongside this, she continues to contribute her academic insight to her specialty research fields, with particular attention to the history and theory of lighting design and the designed environment in the modern era. Her past research has brought an intersectional feminist perspective to this area, particularly in the analysis of mid-century modernist practice.

  • Expertise

    Design history, architectural history, histories of the interior, architectural lighting design, feminist discourses, consumer culture, popular culture, cultural history, American mid-century modernism.

  • Recent research successes

    Architectures of Display: Department Stores and Modern Retail (2016)
    Through an international range of case studies from the 1870s to the present, this volume analyzes strategies of display in department stores and modern retail spaces. Established scholars and emerging researchers working within a range of disciplinary contexts and historiographical traditions shed light on what constitutes modern retail and the ways in which interior designers, architects, and artists have built or transformed their practice in response to the commercial context. Edited by Margaret Maile Petty alongside Patricia Lara-Bentancourt and Anca Lasc, and published by Routledge.

    Cities of Light: Two Centuries of Urban Illumination (2015)
    Cities of Light is the first global overview of modern urban illumination, edited by Prof. Petty alongside Sandy Isenstadt and Dietrich Neumann and published by Routledge. Expansive in its coverage, Cities of Light spans two centuries and six continents to build a picture of the history, geography, and theory of urban lighting, providing a global framework for historical studies of urban lighting and offering a new perspectives and future speculations on this fast-moving area of study.

    Exhibitions for Modern Living: Lifestyle propaganda and the promotion of modern furniture and furnishings in the United States, 1930s – 1950s (2017)
    A book chapter in The Politics of Furniture: Identity, Persuasion and Diplomacy in Postwar Interiors, eds. Fredie Floré and Cammie McAtee (Routledge).

    Commercial Patronage and the Retail Exhibition of Modern Design in the United States, 1930s -1950s (2017)
    A book chapter in Incorporating Culture: Corporate Patronage of Art and Architecture, eds. Melissa Renn and Monica Jovanovich-Kelley (Routledge).

    Glamour Pink: Personality, Color, and Beauty in the Marketing of Electric Lighting in the United States (2017)
    A book chapter in Bright Modernity: Color, Commerce, and Consumption in Global Perspective; Worlds of Consumption Series, eds. Reggie Blaszczyk and Mark Stoneman (Palgrave Macmillan).

  • Qualifications
    • Ph.D., School of Architecture, (Victoria University of Wellington, NZ). Thesis, “Cultures of Light: Electric Light in the USA, 1890s-1950s”
    • Doctoral course work and qualifying exams (The Bard Graduate Center, New York City, USA)
    • MA, Design History (The Bard Graduate Center, New York City, NY). Thesis, “Richard Kelly: from Johnson’s Glass House to Seagram’s Glass Box, 1948-1958”
    • BA, Art History, Summa cum Laude (University of Oregon, USA)

  • Professional affiliations or service roles

    Ambassador, Good Design Australia; Non Executive Director, StartupAUS; Activator, SheEO™; Co-Founder, Precincts & Inspiration Director, Women in Smart Cities Global; Member, Australian Institute of Company Directors; Member, Cumulus International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design, and Media; Founding member and member, Advisory Board of DesignCo, NZ; Member, Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ); Member, Society of Architectural Historians (SAH); Member, Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ); Member, International Committee on the History of Technology (ICHOTEC); Member, Society for the Preservation of Modernism (SPAM); Advisor, PhoScope.