Richard Doubleday, associate professor of graphic design, is among a group of 48 scholars to be awarded the highly competitive 2021-2022 China-U.S. Scholars Program (CUSP) Fellowship.

The program is a one-time grant created to promote cross-cultural exchange in the arts, humanities and social sciences after the cancellation of the China and Hong Kong Fulbright programs under the Trump administration.

Twenty-four fellows were chosen from the U.S. to spend a year or semester researching, working or studying in China, while 24 fellows from China were selected to pursue projects in the United States. Applications were evaluated on their ability to foster positive collaboration between academics or professionals and their potential to create long-term engagement between the U.S. and China.

Doubleday will be conducting design history research that builds on his Doctorate of Design in Cultural Preservation (DDes) and long-term work in China over the last decade.

During the CUSP fellowship, Doubleday will be charting and examining the dramatic change in contemporary graphic design that has flourished when China adopted a market-oriented economy in the aftermath of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Doubleday is interested in understanding how, despite the designers’ embrace of international affiliations and influences, they nevertheless maintained a commitment to Chinese cultural heritage, preservation, and artistic traditions.

Doubleday is a graphic designer and educator with a specific interest in history. He held a Fulbright Fellowship where he was a Senior Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. His research lies in charting and examining the dramatic change in contemporary graphic design that has flourished when China adopted a market-oriented economy in the aftermath of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Doubleday’s research reveal’s contemporary Chinese graphic design activities profound affect on the developing contemporary visual language of design in China in an aesthetic, economic, cultural, and design historical context.

He is currently a Doctor of Design in Cultural Preservation candidate at LSU.

“This prestigious CUSP award will enable Richard to travel back to China next spring to complete research for his DDes thesis,” said Michael Desmond, director of graduate studies at the College of Art & Design.

Read more about the Doctor of Design in Cultural Preservation program.