Rosamund Lily West is a Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. Her current research looks at the post-war housing estates of the London County Council and the public sculpture installed within these estates. She is interested in the layers of memory and emotion within urban spaces, particularly in relation to planning, relocation, communities and public art. She is particularly interested in using walking as a methodology and practises of documentation and archiving. She continues to work with the museum and heritage field, specialising in contemporary collecting, communities and sculpture.
Rosamund has a BA (Hons) and MA in History of Art from the University of York. Prior to her role in Manchester, she worked at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, as a Research Fellow on the Survey of London, teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Before entering academia, she worked in the museum sector for 15 years, holding curatorial positions at London Transport Museum, Kingston Museum and as Paul Mellon Research Curator at the Royal Society of Sculptors. She collaborated with the Henry Moore Institute on the research season, ‘Researching Women in Sculpture’ in 2022. She has written, researched and led architectural walking tours for the V&A, the London Festival of Architecture, The Architecture Foundation, the London Society and Open City and currently leads tours of Canary Wharf and Woolwich.
She has appeared on Woman’s Hour, been a guest on Open City’s podcast. ‘The Londown’ and, most recently, appeared on UKTV’s ‘Secrets of the London Underground’. She is the co-convenor of the Women Architectural Historians network of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.”