Bess Williamson

Bess Williamson is a historian of design and material culture with a particular interest in social and political concerns in design, including environmental, labor, justice, and rights issues as they shape and are shaped by spaces and things. Her research examines how the concept of “access” is valued in contemporary design and what its consequences mean for the everyday lives of disabled people.

Williamson is the co-editor of Making Disability Modern: Design Histories, a collection of case studies of objects, buildings, and systems that reflect changing design approaches to disability from the 18th century to the present. Her first book, Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design, which explores the history of design responses to disability rights from 1945 to recent times, was published in 2019. In a new project, she is exploring the relationships between caregiving and design.