Nigel Whiteley, a cultural historian, is Professor of Visual Arts in the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University. He has been a visiting professor in India and China, and lectured widely in the USA and Europe. His most recent book is the critically acclaimed Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future (MIT, 2002), and other solo books include Design For Society (Reaktion, 1993, regularly reprinted), and Pop Design - Modernism to Mod, (Design Council, 1987). Whiteley is editor of De-Traditionalisation and Art: Aesthetic, Authority, Authenticity (Middlesex University Press, 2000). He has had essays published in journals such as Visible Language, Art History, The Oxford Art Journal, Artforum, the Journal of Architectural Education, Design Issues, Architectural History and Cultural Values, and his work has been translated into Indian, Chinese, French, Italian, Portuguese, Croatian and Korean.