The New Insights Conference is organised by Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner and Dr Jenny Saunt. 
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Jenny is Senior Curator of Furniture at the V&A. Her Courtauld PhD and V&A/RCA Masters both focused on the design and production of decorative lime plasterwork in early modern England. Before arriving at the V&A, Jenny was curator for a private American collection of English furniture and decorative arts (c.1500-1760), producing numerous exhibitions and publications, including a collaboration with the Yale Centre for British Art for Marking Time: Objects, people and their lives 1500 to 1800. Jenny has published and lectured widely and loves to teach her subjects. Coming originally from a design practice background, working first as a theatre designer, then in building conservation as a lime plaster modeller - winning numerous prestigious awards in both fields - Jenny loves nothing better than working out the how and why of historic design and production in furniture and buildings.

Olivia is Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the V&A, where she looks after the collection of design drawings and models. Having studied at Cambridge, Yale and University College London, she then held a post-doctoral fellowship at Trinity College Dublin. Subsequently she worked as an Architectural Investigator at English Heritage and as an Historian with the Survey of London before joining the V&A in 2014. She specialises in architectural history, particularly that of early modern England – her doctoral research explored perceptions of medieval buildings during the seventeenth century. As a specialist in architectural drawings, she is interested in the role of visual representation in documentation and communication. She has published on a variety of subjects from medieval wall-painting and early-modern antiquarianism to contemporary architects’ sketchbooks. She has curated displays and exhibitions at the V&A, the Tchoban Foundation for Architectural Drawing , Berlin, and the Venice Biennale, and has broadcast for BBC Four and Radio Three. 

Image: Decorative plasterwork, Little Castle, Bolsover. Photographed by Richard Ireland