Visual Culture and affiliated inter-disciplinary research
Research Showcase
BA (Hons)
Art History and Visual Culture
Fashion and Design History
MA
Curating Collections and Heritage
History of Design and Material Culture
PhD
History of Art and Design Design Studies
Visual Culture and affiliated inter-disciplinary research
The Centre for Design History applies a cross-disciplinary research perspective to understand how design in all its forms has shaped things, spaces and actions across time.
Our approach extends to research across other arts and humanities, the social sciences, engineering, health, and community engagement. A wide social and economic impact develops through our links with the cultural sector, particularly museums and art galleries, government and voluntary sectors and creative businesses. Our research in design history makes an important contribution to cultural life and wellbeing in areas such as heritage, sustainable design, housing and dress histories.
We would like to thank the School of Humanities and Social Science and the Centre for Design History for supporting the publication of this catalogue.
…to the 2025 Research Showcase celebrating the work of BA, MA, and PhD students from the history of art and design courses at the University of Brighton. This exhibition features projects from the following:
1. Undergraduate Students:
BA (Hons) Art History and Visual Culture and BA (Hons) Fashion and Design History students are presenting dissertations developed through a year of intensive research. Rooted in their personal interests and guided by specialist teaching, these projects evolve through a structured series of milestones, culminating in this final public showcase.
2. Postgraduate Students:
MA Curating Collections and Heritage students are sharing research drawn from case studies focused on critical exhibition studies. Their work demonstrates a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches explored throughout their studies.
3. Doctoral Researchers
PhD students affiliated with the Centre for Design History are showcasing the latest stages of research by offering insight into their ongoing scholarly work.
As you will see, the student projects span a broad historical and geographical range, from the late seventeenth century to the present day, and include both local contexts and international case studies. The research engages with diverse themes, such as gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, class and taste, ecology and sustainability, politics and protest, consumption and collecting, craft and technology, as well as social structures and their subversion.
The materials and subjects under study are equally varied, from the sacred to the occult, the public and the private, and the elite to the everyday. Students examine painting, photography, and performance; film and digital media; advertising, periodicals, and packaging; architecture, furniture, and interiors; galleries, and exhibitions; as well as fashion, dress, and textiles.
Their work is underpinned by rigorous research methodologies, drawing on libraries, archives, and museums, and often incorporating interviews and fieldwork. We warmly invite you to spend time with this showcase and to appreciate the breadth, depth, and originality of the students’ work. We are immensely proud of their achievements.
If this has sparked your interest in pursuing studies in the history of art and design, our contact details can be found at the back of the catalogue. These courses offer opportunities for both indepth exploration and specialisation, from undergraduate to advanced research levels.
Dr Ceren Özpınar (Course Leader, BA Art History and Visual Culture); Dr Verity Clarkson (BA Fashion and Design History); Dr Harriet Atkinson (MA Curating Collections and Heritage); Dr Charlotte Nicklas (MA History of Design and Material Culture) and all the PhD supervisors.
The Trifecta of Nudity within Nineteenth Century Art: The
Androcentric Control
over the Body
Mia Bishton
Nudity has arguably always had a place in art. However, the nineteenth century saw a shift in focus with the female body epitomising the concept of the nude. This dissertation explores the influence of androcentrism on the nude through the use of feminist perspectives to represent a gendered argument. Analysis of the nude opens up discussion of classification of the labels such as erotica, nude, and pornography. Therefore, these terms are outlined through this study.
Central concepts outlined throughout this study are threefold: the classification of terms to describe the naked body, censorship of the human form and the influence of gender roles on depictions of nudity. Visual analysis of the works of Thomas Rowlandson, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and finally Auguste Belloc communicate how the nude was received in the nineteenth century through various artistic mediums.
Scholarships from gender studies such as Lynda Nead, Gloria Steinem and Laura Mulvey communicate a needed feminist discourse regarding nudity in art. Psychological and sociological factors affecting nude art are also explored throughout the study, aiding explanation as to why certain attitudes are formed. This dissertation implores readers to assess the connection between sociological and psychological impressions on the reception of artworks. Looking beyond simply the aesthetic visuality of a nude painting highlights the masculine demand for dominance over women demonstrating the wider issue of patriarchal control within society.
Boyce, She ain’t holding them up, She’s holding on (Some English Rose), 1986, pastel and gouache on paper, Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art.
The Art of Diaspora: Communicating Caribbean Identity
in Post-War and Contemporary Britain
Maddison Brathwaite-Richards
In contemporary Britain, questions around race, migration and identity are more prominent than ever. with the Windrush Scandal being exposed in 2018, and the Black Lives Matter protests occurring in 2020, Britain’s colonial past is still taking its toll on Black communities today. The arrival of the Windrush Generation, from 1948 to 1971, marked a significant moment of mass migration from the Caribbean, and forms a pivotal chapter in the making of modern Britain. Since then, Caribbean culture has influenced various parts of British life, from food to music to language to sport. This influence can also be seen across British art and visual culture, where Caribbean artists have told their sides of history, and helped define what British art looks like today.
For aspiring Caribbean artists, getting recognition for their work was not so easy. The Art of Diaspora: Communicating Caribbean Identity in Post-War and Contemporary Britain explores how three Caribbean artists have used various art forms to express their identities, and carve out space in a country that often rendered them invisible. Through the vibrant textile designs of Althea McNish, the expressive, political interventions of Sonia Boyce, and the experimental cinematics of Rhea Storr, these works form a powerful archive of diaspora, transformation, and memory. Drawing on the work of cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, and Avtar Brah, The Art of Diaspora shows how identity is never singular or fixed, but is layered, always shifting and deeply shaped by history.
Sonia
Hirohiko Araki, DIO and The World, featured in the ‘Hirohiko Araki Jojo Exhibition: Ripples of Time’, 2018.
Beyond boundaries: Reimagining
Manga as Fine Art through Hirohiko Araki’s ‘Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure’
Alicia Curran
This dissertation examines manga as an art form, specifically navigating its place within the high and low art divide. While traditionally viewed as popular entertainment, manga’s intricate storytelling, artistic innovation, and cultural significance complicate this classification. Through a historical exploration of the medium, this research contextualizes
manga’s development, from its early expressions in ukiyo-e prints to its global status today.
A focal point of this study is Hirohiko Araki, a celebrated mangaka whose long-running series, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, challenges conventional artistic boundaries. Araki’s distinct visual style—marked by elaborate compositions, expressive character designs, and references to classical art— demands recognition beyond mere commercial illustration. His exhibitions, which showcase original manga artwork in prestigious galleries and museums, elevate his work into artistic spaces typically reserved for high art.
The dissertation interrogates the high and low art divide, a historically entrenched distinction that often undermines works associated with mass appeal. By analyzing Araki’s career and the shifting perceptions of manga within academia and institutions, this research argues for manga’s legitimacy as high art while acknowledging its ability to transcend rigid artistic classifications. The dissertation challenges outdated artistic hierarchies and expands our understanding of what constitutes fine art. If manga can inhabit museum walls alongside Renaissance paintings, can we still dismiss it as mere pop culture?
Joseph William Mallord Turner, Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge -Moses Writing the Book of Genesis, 1843, oil paint on canvas, 1036x1036x115 mm, Tate Collection, London.
Reenvisioning the Stars; The Disconnect Between Man and the Natural World in the Celestial Sublime
Ella Hack
The celestial sublime refers to visual representations of the natural world, specifically of the sun, moon, stars, and sky, which
stimulate mixed feelings of awe and terror. This response to the natural world has been theorised by the likes of Burke and Kant as being only understood by the male viewer - with their viewpoints aligning the natural world with femininity. Within the context of eco-feminist theory, I argue that the reduction of both women and the natural world to the masculine ideals of beauty and femininity lead to the domination and destruction of both.
Underpinned with eco-feminist theory, this dissertation evaluates the means in which male domination of the natural world is visually represented. Through this framework, it analyses themes of motherhood through personifications of the landscape, viewing culture and the subjugating male gaze, as well as critiques of the Anthropocene and the disconnect between man and the natural world in times of industrialisation. With knowledge of the current climate emergency, it is pertinent that we turn our attention to the views and opinions towards the natural world during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as this was the period which saw the dawn of industrialisation. Man’s defiance of humanity’s intrinsic connection to the natural world in an attempt to dominate it is captured in representations of the sublime in art.
Yin Xiuzhen, Washing River, 1995, photograph, unknown dimensions.
Betsy Damon Archive: Keepers of the Waters (Chengdu and Lhasa) Photographic Documentation, Asia Art Archive.
Women and Water in a Man-Made World: Can Ecological Art and Ecofeminist Theories Challenge Anthropocene Attitudes to Water?
Maizie Hegarty-Woods
Though it may be hard to stay optimistic in today’s world, where we are constantly reminded of the ecological crises plaguing our planet, animals, and nature, for many of us, these issues are distanced from our daily lives. What about the communities that are living directly enmeshed in these injustices? How are artists today dealing with these issues, and what can they teach us? This dissertation will look at three pieces of ecological art that use water as a thematic focus: Yin Xiuzhen’s 1995 Washing River, Ruth Cuthand’s Don’t Breathe, Don’t Drink, from 2015, and Aïda Muluneh’s Water Life Series from 2018.
Using these works to explore three separate contemporary issues affecting water in their respective communities, I will discuss what methods these artists use to help raise awareness for ecological issues, and how they help challenge dominant views of water in the Anthropocene. Alongside these works, I am investigating contextual and theoretical understandings to discuss how our relationship with water came to be what it is today, what underpins it, who suffers most, and how we can challenge it. I am proposing that Ecofeminism, a movement which links the devaluation of women and femininity with nature, highlights how deeply patriarchal structures inevitably fail us all, and by encouraging solidarity with each other and nature we can reevaluate the relationship we have with our planet and see the natural world as part of us, rather than a resource that serves us or profits us.
Pane, Action Psyché, 1974, performance documentation. Photograph courtesy of the artist’s estate.
Witnessing Wounds: Performance Art, Suffering and the Spectator’s Gaze
Alexandra Laveglia
Marina Abramović and Gina Pane stand as pivotal figures in the history of performance art, known for using their own bodies as sites of endurance, vulnerability, and transformation. Through visceral, often confrontational acts, they interrogate the boundaries of pain, intimacy, and the relationship between artist and audience. Marina Abramović, often dubbed the “grandmother of performance art,” pushes physical and emotional extremes to explore presence and connection. In works like Rhythm 0 (1974), she surrendered control to the audience, inviting them to use objects ranging from feathers to knives on her passive body. This radical trust emphasized the fragility and resilience of the human spirit, confronting viewers with their complicity. Gina Pane, a key figure in the French body art movement, similarly used self-inflicted pain to expose the social and spiritual condition of humanity. In performances such as Psyche (1973), Gina self-inflicts wounds on her body with a razor, her body a universal plane for female suffering. Pane framed her work through feminist and Catholic lenses, focusing on symbolic pain and ritual.
Both artists transformed performance into a space of profound psychological and cultural confrontation. Yet, where Abramović leans toward durational presence and metaphysical inquiry, Pane anchors her acts in poetic symbolism and sacrificial gesture. Together, they expand the possibilities of performance art, challenging audiences to witness, to feel, and ultimately, to reckon with the embodied truth of art.
Gina
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970, Great Salt Lake, Utah. Dia Art Foundation.
Reframing Nature: The Evolution of Human-Nature Relations in Art
and Architectural Practices
Neve Lloyd Owen
My dissertation explores the evolving relationship
between humans and nature through individual and comparative analyses of two case studies deeply rooted in the natural world. These case studies focus on the Gardens of Versailles, a historical royal architectural project commissioned by Louis XIV, and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, a contemporary landmark representative of the earthwork movement from the late 1960s. Throughout my investigation, I utilise the contrasting frameworks of Anthropocentrism—a philosophy that places human needs above those of nature—and Ecocentrism. This theory advocates for the intrinsic value of the natural world. This framework helps elucidate the philosophical foundations of our past interactions with nature and how these interactions evolve in response to increasing environmental awareness.
In line with anthropocentric ideas, the Versailles Gardens are a prime example of how constructed surroundings represent dominance over nature. By harnessing nature to achieve cultural supremacy, landscape architecture, human ambition, and political power converge, as my examination of their ordered structure and aesthetics demonstrates. In contrast to contemporary ecological concerns, these gardens reflect a time in history when government goals were met by design, putting people at the centre of environmental significance.
In my investigation of the Spiral Jetty, I explore its interaction with the environment and our evolving relationship with nature. The artwork exemplifies contemporary environmental consciousness and sustainable design, contrasting with the Versailles Gardens. It raises questions about the permanence of art, as it is alternately exposed and submerged by changing water levels. Smithson’s criticism of art commercialisation is evident in the jetty’s remote location, reflecting the countercultural critiques of the 1960s and 1970s and sparking discussions on space, power, and impermanence.
Anti-Intellectualism and Contemporary Visions: A
Cultural Refusal
Eden Parsley
The relationship between contemporary art and its growing ideological opposition, Antiintellectualism, has led to a widespread and public disregard of contemporary art. A lack of audience willingness to engage with more challenging features of visual art, due to the intellectual labour required for their analysis and subsequent appreciation, is responsible for a phenomenon devaluing some of the most culturally significant contemporary works of the twentieth century. Whether it presents itself through the attitude that anyone could create contemporary art or social media trends insisting it is lacking in any value, this culminating relationship between art and ideology begs the question, what is it about contemporary art which evokes such negative reactions?
This dissertation explores both the histories and contexts which have come to inform contemporary art as a visual category alongside an examination of how anti-intellectualism functions ideologically. The harm perpetuated towards contemporary art, as enabled through the ideology of antiintellectualism, is examined to determine how the two seemingly differing components intersect to birth a highly visible cultural trend. As enabled through the implementation of two artistic case studies, and substantiated by the writings of Jacques Rancière and Arthur C. Danto, this dissertation answers the question, how does anti-intellectualism and contemporary art interact?
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (A Portrait of Ross), sculptural installation, 1991.
The Modernisation of Postwar Cabaret and Burlesque in Relation to Visual Culture
Scarlett Swinnerton
This dissertation follows the contributions of 1940s-1970s performance in cabaret across the cities of Berlin, Paris and London in comparing the impact produced upon each society. Cabaret can be described under a meeting place for artists, where performance takes place, as an intimate, small-scale, but intellectually ambitious venue. It mainly follows the themes like politics and gender through the mocking of higher class and power in underground shows for the underrepresented.
Using a variety of media such as film, photography, illustrations and posters, this dissertation curates a view of cabaret for the modern-day audience to visualise. The contents of visual culture through promotional advertising, photography, and film media aims to promote conclusions on the taboo of cabaret among society and broaden discussion on abhorrent acts of war turned into art of mockery. Inclusion of the film Cabaret, the venue and show of Madame Arthur’s further the discussion and example of such work within this piece. The introduction to burlesque as a concept throughout talks through political aspects of the ‘female’ body in expansions of cabaret clothing and performances. The illustrations of Ronald Cobb are shown as an example of the exaggeration of costuming and the feminine body within burlesque as both an artform and liberation for performers who bring them to life. This study holds importance as reminder of why cabaret started, and many performers use it still as a tool for activism amongst governmental issues that present themselves in modern day.
Lesbianhood: Gender Performance and Queer Identity in Lesbian Photography
Niamh Carden
This dissertation traverses the visual politics of lesbian identity through contemporary photography, arguing for a critical distinction between “lesbian” and “queer” within the broader field of gender and sexuality studies. This text analyses how photographic practices by self-identified lesbian artists construct, perform, and challenge gendered sexuality across intersectional axes. Focusing on three photographers: Catherine Opie, Del LaGrace Volcano, and Zanele Muholi, this project examines how performance, race and gender amalgamate to articulate a fluid, resistant, and often underrepresented lesbian subjecthood. Employing Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, Jack Halberstam’s concept of female masculinity and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s framework of intersectionality, the dissertation negotiates how lesbian identity is developed in tension with, yet also within, queer theory.
The chapter on Catherine Opie centres around performance and the subversion of domestic and community portraiture. Del LaGrace Volcano’s work draws the second chapter’s attention to the butch body as a site of disruption and embodiment, while Zanele Muholi’s photographs are analysed through the lens of intersectionality, black lesbian resistance, and postapartheid visibility. By threading the analysis through the concept of “lesbianhood” as a lived, political, and boundless space, this dissertation evaluates the positioning of lesbian specificity within queer discourse. It argues for a renewed acknowledgement of lesbian subjectivity not as a fixed identity, but as a space where gender, race, sexuality and resistance engage in mutable interrelation.
Cabaret Club Menu, Ronald Cobb, 1950, Murray’s Club Archive.
Catherine Opie, Bo from Being and Having, 1991.
BA (Hons) Fashion and Design History
“The Whole Scene was Bullsh*t”: Edie Sedgwick, Agency, & Media
Portrayals of Personal Style (1965-1972)
Avery Chamberlain
Actress and model Edie Sedgwick has become an icon of 1960s subcultural fashion, known for her avant-garde and risque ensembles. While her personal style has been recognised and appreciated for her uniqueness, there is a lack of analysis into the level of agency she possessed in the presentation of her image. This dissertation asks the question: During the height of her fame in the late 1960s, what agency did Edie possess in media portrayals of her personal style? Agency is the ability for a person to make choices for oneself through actions.
From her presence the lyrics of Bob Dylan to the photographs of Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick dressed herself in a way that subverted the norm and set her personal image apart. As case studies, this dissertation analyses forms of media including a range of films, photography, song lyrics, and print media. Across these pieces of media, the views and goals of their creators, the cultural contexts for their creation, and their visible characteristics influence how Edie Sedgwick is portrayed within them. Through these case studies, the varying degrees of agency she is granted in her self-presentation are revealed. Despite her unique and iconic sense of style, this dissertation uncovers the failure of media representations of individuality to give an accurate representation of the person. Edie Sedgwick was a woman with an extremely unique approach to fashion and personal self-presentation through her exercise of agency. Yet, the pieces of media she is portrayed in are products of systems which often remove agency; this dissertation explores this idea through visual and print media.
Empty Your Pockets! They’re Full of History!
Eden Cronin
The humble pocket can be often seen as an afterthought, overlooked and unimportant. Yet, as history would tell you, the pocket is built on intention and holds thousands of years’ worth of importance. There is nothing but thought put into the pocket and as a result it has been seamlessly removed from women’s clothing for what seems to be eternity.
In today’s society pockets for women seem a rarity. While their male counterparts have a vast amount of room to carry their belongings, women struggle to fit their own phone in their pockets. Expected to carry around large and inconvenient bags that expose their belongings to the outside world thus creating a vulnerability. This of course was not always the case, throughout the seventeenth and early nineteenth century women often wore tie-on pockets which were pouches made in varying different materials. These pouches which tied around the waist underneath the wearer’s garments provided ample space for the wearers every need. However, it has been revealed that the lack of pockets in women’s clothing is a result of difficult beauty standards, and a functional pocket would deprive women of the flawless and feminine shapes they are expected to meet.
This dissertation explores the relationship women have had with pockets over several centuries. Furthermore, it explains why women are deprived of pockets and what is being done to fight the gender inequality in fashion. It presents how the pocket is a feminist issue and how its neglect is no longer being overlooked.
Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, 1965, photograph, gelatin silver print, 19.8 x 4 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Charles H. Hoyt, A Contented Women, 1898, The U.S. Printing Co/ Library of Congress.
Cilla Black, Cathy McGowan and other Biba shop girls helping move into the Biba Church Street Store in 1966, sourced via Pari Schon’s Instagram @biba_pari_ vintage_collection.
Young, Working Women & Affordable Fashion: The
Legacy of Biba
(1964-1975)
Grace Dowle
Biba (1964-1975) gained popularity due to their bold designs, using dark colours and original silhouettes previously not touched by other designers. Founder and designer Barbara Hulanicki’s pioneering approach to
retail has influenced the high street stores in the way that we have experienced them since the 1960s.
Biba was attractive to young women due to the new designs and styles that they were offering, these young women desired clothing that was different from the ‘stuffy’ and ‘matronly’ styles worn by older generations of women. Biba’s lower price point distinguished them from the expensive boutiques that catered towards London’s’ elite. Biba appealed to all, attracting attention from famous figures and wealthy clientele. Biba’s popularity allowed it to grow from boutique stores to a department store, named Big Biba. This meant expanding into many different departments including cosmetics, household goods and even food. The Biba lifestyle was created, fostering a cult following of loyal customers.
This dissertation explores how Biba made affordable fashionable clothing accessible to young women in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly young, working women. Through looking into Biba and Barbara Hulanicki’s continuing legacy and impact, the lifestyle perpetuated to young women by the Biba stores and looking into the relationship between young, working women and fashion, this dissertation argues that Biba was integral to providing new fashionable and inexpensive styles for young, working women, a new market of customers, who previously had largely been ignored.
Dressed for the Occasion: Reconstructing a Mid 1890s ‘Robe a La Transformation’
Lucy Foley-Farnsworth
Physical clothing has a fundamentally significant role in the study of dress history, reflecting gender norms, social ideals, politics and aesthetic trends of the times that they were worn in. The unique bodily experience between the individual and their clothing is one that cannot be understated, and yet frequently in the study of dress history, is found taking a backseat when compared to other manners of study.
This dissertation wishes to understand how the long-adopted, yet lesser recognised idea of ‘embodied practice’ has been applied to dress history, seeking to learn through doing and making in order to gain a uniquely nuanced and hands-on understanding of how physical garments came into existence. The bodily connection between flesh and fabric, including how it feels to wear a garment, and how a body moves in clothing, can be uncovered by way of fashionable textiles, surviving sewing patterns, and original machinery.
Reconstruction has held a long history within the dress history field, particularly within museum conservatorship, whether it is used to replace damaged or missing pieces of a historical garment, or to recreate a garment entirely. The fascinating insights which this approach can lead to can lead us to understand dress history in ways which can be otherwise difficult to experience.
La Couturier, 16th January 1896.
Francisco de Goya: Art throughout Sickness and Superstition
Megan Glass
The lifetime of artist Francisco de Goya (1746-1826) is one that bore witness to the darkest of human treatment. Having frequently used imagery depicting the tragic reality of the human experience, through representations of conflict and the paranormal, Goya’s rendering of the world around him has become known to many as being infamously harrowing. Whether through the waging of Napoleonic War upon his home country of Spain, or the ruthless persecution of the vulnerable in the Spanish Inquisition, Goya’s artwork consistently represented the collective struggle of his population. As well as documenting the horrors around him, the artist’s very own personal turmoil has frequently been displayed through his artwork. The effect of Goya’s struggles with mental health and disability have been researched and discussed thoroughly with relation to his chosen imagery, but how can displays of Goya’s struggles represent that of his country?
This dissertation analyses Goya’s interpretation of his own turmoil, experienced through a sudden loss of mental and physical ability, and relates potential findings to the sociopolitical upheaval that took place around the artist throughout his lifetime. It could be argued that Goya’s analyses of the personal anguish involving the human psyche were intended to remain separate from his documentation of widespread conflict and persecution in Spain, but through inspection it becomes clear that many interpretations can be connected. Through iconographic research and biographical interpretation, this dissertation intends to determine the greater meaning behind Goya’s art, with regards to both his personal and public life in eighteenth and nineteenth century Spain.
“Daisy Fresh Girls”: An Exploration into the Misinterpretations of the Lolita Aesthetic and Fashion’s Fetishisation of Girlhood
Tiziri Hadjmahfoud-Hope
Bert Stern, 1960.
Heart-shaped sunglasses, frilly dresses, and vintage twopieces are all iconic symbols synonymous with Lolita. Lolita is a story that is used to controversy. Since its original publication in 1955, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel about 12-year-old Dolores Haze’s abuse has been consistently misinterpreted, especially in relation to fashion. The story of a paedophile’s obsession and infatuation with a young girl has formed its own aesthetic that is based on and takes inspiration from mainly the two film adaptations of Lolita, Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 adaptation and Adrian Lyne’s 1997 version. Both films fail to refer to Dolores by her real name, she is only ever ‘Lolita’.
This work focuses on the exploration of the specific curated Lolita fashion aesthetic, analysing the costumes from both film adaptations using critical film analysis, feminist and existentialist methodologies. The most popular image of Lolita stems from Bert Stern’s promotional photoshoot for Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation. The pictures feature Lolita, played by Sue Lyon, wearing red heart-shaped sunglasses, holding a red lollipop, and looking seductively into the camera. Fashion’s continued use of Lolita as a sex symbol is a troubling one, but despite the somewhat obvious discomfort of Lolita’s romanisation, she is still sexualised in fashion marketing, pop culture, online blogs, music and film. It is important to understand Lolita’s role in fashion and how the aesthetic has been used. It is even more important to see where we can find Lolita and to explore how far the Lolita aesthetic strays from the original story.
Francisco de Goya, Witches’ Flight, 1797-98, oil on canvas, 43.5 cm x 30.5 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.
Sue Lyon wearing heartshaped sunglasses as Lolita, promotional photoshoot for Lolita (1962),
ideal portrayal,
Melville UK, Instagram, March 2025.
Fashioning the Thin Ideal: Clothing, Media and Models
Ellie Haynes
Fashioning the Thin Ideal explores the evolving portrayal of thinness within the fashion industry, examining its pervasive influence utilising the physical material garment, representations through the media, and the role of fashion models. Through a critical lens, this work discusses the aesthetic choices in high fashion which regularly assume an ultra-thin body type, marginalising diverse and average body shapes therefore reinforcing a singular beauty standard. Touching on the 1920s celebrity culture to the present-day media influenced fashion landscape, the exhibit investigates various fashion forms and their contributions to societal beauty ideals, for example, Brandy Melville. Analysing sizing systems, garment design and construction, and media portrayals, we highlight the relentless pursuit of the thin ideal that dominates the fashion landscape.
Central to this discourse, foundational texts such as Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth (1990) and Leon Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory (1954) became very useful illuminating the complex relationship between the psychology of self-worth and unrealistic beauty standards which are shaped by the unrealistic ideals of fashion.
This research draws on methodological, theoretical, historical, and historiographical perspectives to dissect the omnipresence of the thin body in modern society and culture. Furthermore, it addresses the symbolic and economic implications of fashion and the body, shedding light on the societal obsession with thinness in the West. Aiming to confront the detrimental perceptions of the female body, exposing the resulting issues of mental health, self-esteem, body dissatisfaction, and the broader consequences of adherence to such narrow standards, pointing directly to the reformation of fashion systems.
View from Dirty Computer, screenshot done by author, 2018, YouTube, https://youtu.be/ jdH2Sy-BlNE?si=zepCtJwaN2g2shhX.
Afrofuturism and Fashion and Design within Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer: An Emotion Picture (2018)
Emily Hetherington
In recent years, Afrofuturism has become more mainstream with films such as Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther (2018) and musicians such as OutKast and Janelle Monáe. Afrofuturism asks the question, as Mark Dery defines it in his essay, “Black to the Future,” how “can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures?” Both a sub-genre of science fiction and an artistic philosophy that artists who use, Afrofuturism makes enriching worlds and narratives pulling from their marginalised status in society, mainly stemming from their race.
This dissertation, “Afrofuturism and Fashion and Design
Within Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer: An Emotion Picture (2018),” explores how Janelle Monáe has updated the philosophy of Afrofuturism for the twenty-first century audience by combining multiple art mediums. It delves deep into how the costume and set design helps to highlight the different themes and messages found in the film and the music it helps to visualise. Alongside this, seeing how Janelle Monáe celebrity persona has evolved and changed from their early career to the release of this film and third studio album, Dirty Computer. This dissertation assesses how successfully Janelle Monáe brings in a broad audience, focusing on costume and set design.
Reconstructing a Victorian Corset: The Making, Wearing and Misconceptions
Charlotte Knight
Reconstructing a Victorian Corset: The Making, Wearing and Misconceptions is an analysis of learning through the embodied experience of making, how wearing historical costume can enhance perspectives of the past, why corsets have such a bad reputation and analysing the facts of wearing them. Corsets have been vilified throughout the media, especially due to the stereotype of tightlacing in period dramas. Historically this was only done by a minority of people and was looked upon disapprovingly. This dissertation will dispel these myths of the ‘torturous’ corset.
The reasons for reconstructing garments, what I have learnt through remaking an 1860s corset, and the embodied experience of wearing a corset, are important aspects of reflection for reconstruction. I used a pattern taken from an extant corset from The Underpinnings Museum, and I reconstructed it as ‘accurately’ as possible. The meaning imbued into the corset through making and how the corset changed and moulded to my body through wearing is discussed.
An analysis of how corsets have been written historically aids in dispelling the myths surrounding corsets and applying my personal experience of wearing them. This dissertation discusses accounts from the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine about tightlacing, and respondents’ experiences of corset wearing and analyses the biases of these people. To further dispel the misconceptions of corsets, I use my experience as evidence that corsets are comfortable and have benefits to wearing them. Despite this study’s bias towards corsets, it acknowledged some of the negative effects of corsets. However, it demonstrates how accounts have been exaggerated or misinterpreted, challenging the misconceptions.
Fatigued: Sartorial Dissent in the GI Movement, 1965-1972
Lily Moreno-Sheridan
The popular memory of the anti-Vietnam War movement in America is filled with images of student protests and long-haired civilian hippies. However, protests were often filled with (and led by) veterans and uniformed members of the military. Often overlooked in the history of the Antiwar Movement, the GI Movement was instrumental in bringing the war to an end. This dissertation presents the ways in which the uniform of the American GI became a site of radical protest during the Vietnam War (1965-1973) and in the movement against it.
Over the course of the American
involvement in Vietnam, uniforms became a canvas upon which soldiers expressed their rejection of the war and military. Men wrote antiwar messages on their helmets and uniforms, wore peace sign necklaces, and ignored army regulations: all of which created an aura of dissent among American troops in Vietnam. Upon their return home, veterans of the war re-donned their fatigues to fight against the war, using their status as veterans to legitimize and promote the antiwar cause. As a case study, this dissertation analyzes the way the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War used their appearance (through fashion and grooming) as tool in their demonstrations. This dissertation uses photographs, oral history, contemporary reporting, and academic analyses, to present a material culture focused view of the GI Movement. All these aspects combined to create a visual legacy of the antiwar GI, one that was changed and adapted in popular movies after the war’s end.
Richard Avedon, Who has a better right to oppose the war?, 1969, poster, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
May Morris embroidering at 8 Hammersmith Terrace, 1890s, photograph, 8 x 7cm, William Morris Gallery Collections.
Sustainability and the
Arts
& Crafts Movement: Is it Time for a Revival?
Rebecca Tymchak
The Arts & Crafts Movement started in the nineteenth century as a direct response to the rise of Capitalism and the cheapening of labour and design. In this dissertation the socialist values of the Movement are explored, focusing on how its members expressed their views through the use of artistic dress. It will also look at the influential socialist and feminist May Morris, who along with her father William Morris, was extremely influential at the time.
Utilising the Arts & Crafts Movement’s values, I designed a dress that could have conceivably been worn by members of the Movement at the end of the nineteenth century. Techniques that were favoured at the time were reproduced, including smocking and natural dyeing. The smocking is indicative of the Movement’s admiration of the aesthetic sensibilities of old, especially of the classical and medieval periods. Natural dyeing was favoured for both the muted colours that could be achieved but also for it being an alternative to petroleumbased dyes that were killing rivers around the country and colouring them black.
The final chapter of this dissertation focuses on the present, and how many of the teachings of the Arts & Crafts Movement are extremely applicable to modern methods of sustainability. The Movement was against newly invented aniline chemical dyes polluting rivers, against deforestation, and against factories both due to their pollution but also due to the exploitation of labour they exemplified.
Haute Couture: Exclusive
Artistry and Preserving Tradition or Strategic Branding and Embracing Innovation
Mahtab Vasigh Moghaddam
Haute couture is a fascinating paradox, working as both an icon of exclusive artistry preserving centuriesold traditions and a dynamic force of strategic branding actively embracing innovation. This dissertation looks at the identity and the place of haute couture in the modern fashion world. On one hand, fashion houses such as Chanel carefully preserve French savoir-faire in couture-making techniques. Their métiers d’art ateliers highlight superb hand embroidery and fine craftsmanship as a testament to haute couture heritage. However, creative brands such as Iris Van Herpen are significantly redefining craftsmanship, sculpting outstanding forms with 3D printers and pioneering new materials, pushing fashion into a new technological realm. This ongoing interaction between the past and the future shapes the current identity of haute couture.
Beyond its creative dynamism, haute couture is a valuable strategic asset. The spectacular designs generate what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called ‘symbolic capital.’ This powerful ‘halo effect’ provides brands like Dior or Armani Privé an aura of ultimate luxury, driving global demand for their more accessible lines such as perfumes, cosmetics, and ready-towear, as mentioned by John Fairchild, former editor of WWD, “none of the leading designers could support their studios based on couture sales alone... Early on, the designers started making serious money with perfumes and accessories.” Therefore, haute couture continues not only as an artistic expression but also as a realm in which creative exploration and financial demands are closely intertwined. Haute couture ensures its survival while fueling fashion houses’ appeal and financial success. A dream factory and creative laboratory, its impact lies in iconic garments and luxury’s compelling narrative of exclusivity, creativity, and evolving craftsmanship.
Right: J’Adore perfume bottle, 2025, photo by the author. Left: John Galliano, Maasai-style gold choker, Spring 1998, Christian Dior Show.
Cross-Cultural Exchange, Trade, Colonialism and Religion’s Influence on Modern
Fashion Cities: Dubai
Isabel Weaver
The city of Dubai, under careful oversight of the city’s government, and with the assistance of many businesses and investors, has crafted a reputation for the city as a shining desert oasis of modernity, luxury, high fashion, adventure, and excesses. This image of the city and the lifestyle it showcases has been spread around the world through word of mouth, social media, and advertisements.
This dissertation explores the exact nature of what a Fashion City is, and how this framework applies to Dubai in its current form. Followed by an analysis of the city’s history as a British colony and subsequent development into part of the United Arab Emirates as an emerging nation. Thirdly, there will be sections exploring and analyzing the impact of the overwhelming expatriate population and resulting crosscultural trade and exchange, as well as how this has interacted with the religious and cultural values of both the native Emirati population and the wide range of backgrounds represented by the rest of the population. Finally, all these angles of social, economic, and cultural development will be brought together through how they directly impact the city’s presentation and perception, both by the residents of the city itself, as well as the people who are just visiting short term or have only seen the stories about the opulence of the desert city.
An Exploration of Cultural Significance and Traditional Asian Clothing and Symbols in Twenty-first Century Fashion
Bootsabong Wongsarak
The globalisation of fashion in the twenty-first century has resulted in the catalysed commodification of traditional Asian clothing and symbols, manipulating garments with deep cultural meanings into mass-produced fashion trends for the purpose of aesthetics. Traditional clothing such as the Japanese kimono, the Chinese cheongsam, and the Indian sari were historically filled with identity, heritage, and other meanings, symbolising more than just aesthetics. However, as these garments were brought to the global fashion market, their original cultural contexts are often removed, which results in them being reduced to just symbols. This dissertation focuses on how the fashion industry’s appropriation and re-imagination of traditional Asian clothing, through global brands and fast fashion, has led to the rapid erosion of their cultural significance and meanings. Through key case studies such as Adidas’ Tang Jacket, Urban Outfitters’ use of Hokusai’s The Great Wave, and Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, the dissertation investigates how these clothes and symbols are commodified and advertised to a wide global audience, often removed from their true original meanings.
The popularity of fast fashion and the influence of social media have accelerated the mass production and manipulation of traditional Asian garments, destroying their rich cultural and spiritual meanings. By examining the cultural appropriation and appreciation arguments, this dissertation considers the line between cultural appreciation and exploitation, and how the commodification of cultural symbols impacts the ways in which cultural heritage can be and is preserved. Researching theoretical frameworks from noted scholars such as Joanne Entwistle and Fredric Jameson, this investigation challenges traditional perspectives by considering fashion as a medium of cultural expression and an industry with a need to preserve authenticity in the face of globalisation and fast fashion.
Karim Sahib, two veiled Emirati women stare at a foreigner wearing a revealing dress at the Dubai World Cup horse races, 2009, Dubai, UAE.
Qing Dynasty Official Li Hung-Chang wearing Manchu-influenced attire. Image from Traditional Chinese Clothing: History & Types by Study CLI.
Alexander McQueen: Art, Legacy, Melancholia
Annie Wright
Alexander McQueen is considered one of the greatest designers of all time. His work was often dark, controversial, and subversive. He took inspiration from a range of topics such as history, his heritage, nature and beauty and madness, and interpreted them in his own macabre way. McQueen was someone who struggled a lot with mental health issues and the trauma he had faced in his past. He was able to use his work to tackle these issues. McQueen’s suicide, in February 2011, has left behind a legacy which this dissertation will discuss.
Whilst during his life McQueen was celebrated, since his death, he has become one of the most beloved figures in fashion history. This dissertation argues that McQueen’s legacy is that he is considered one of the greatest designers of all time because of his use of darker subject matter and the way he made his audience feel emotions. Through books, documentaries, and exhibitions, the public has been able to mourn the designer. This has allowed his persona as the tortured genius of fashion to really be cemented. This persona and the vulnerability of his work have created such a strong connection between his audience and himself. Through grieving, his audience has been able to sit with his work and really come to understand it, in a way that was not possible when he was alive. McQueen’s legacy can also be seen in the designers he has inspired, which can reveal to us what aspects of his work are still relevant in today’s fashion climate.
Alexander McQueen, Joan, 1998, Vogue.
MA Curating Collections and Heritage
Protective Custody
Prisoner Training Aid for
SS Guards, as curated at the Topographie Des Terror Documentation Centre, Berlin
Critical Analysis of curatorial practice for “queer” experiences of the Holocaust
Josh Boyle
My Research Project focusses upon curatorial practices surrounding “queer” experiences of the Holocaust. In this, I am tackling two major concepts; the concept of what is “queerness” in the Holocaust, as key scholars such as Jordis Spengler believe we cannot use contemporary terminology when discussing the Holocaust. The second is who is included in definitions of the Holocaust, as this is a contested term in of itself. Holocaust Museums often sit as a site of dissonant heritage, a key theory from J. E. Tunbridge and G.J. Ashworth, and, as according to Tom Lawson, often fall into clichés of Holocaust Representations. Part of this has also meant creating a brief history of the persecution of “queer” people in Germany from across multiple sources. In essence, this is research into who is and should be included in Holocaust heritage, and why there are certain exclusions,
when Nazi persecution targeted a vast range of minority groups. This lack of understanding has consequences beyond academia, with Donald Trump & JK Rowling sharing social media post’s steeped in a misunderstanding of “queer” experiences of the Holocaust. In addition to a theoretical approach, I have also looked at Online Provisions of several key Holocaust institutions and round out my research by critically examining the United States Holocaust Memorial & Museum’s historic travelling exhibition, Prof. Andreas Macara’s Topographie des Terror exhibition in Berlin and at potential future developments at the Holocaust Centre North. I hope that by bringing an interdisciplinary approach as both a scholar of Museum studies, Queer Theory and Holocaust studies, I can bridge the gap between these three unique and well-established fields.
From Invisibility to Visibility – Disability History Exhibitions and Museum Discourse
Suchitra Dorothy Chatterjee
This research examines how disability history exhibitions like “Finding Ivy” (a Disability Holocaust exhibition) and initiatives like “Curating for Change” challenge traditional museum narratives by shifting disabled people from historical erasure to active representation. Drawing on the social model of disability (Shakespeare, 2017) and critical museum studies (Sandell, 2007), my study shows how museums have systematically excluded or pathologised disabled people.
Initial findings show that disability-led curation is transformative, not merely additive. “Finding Ivy” disrupts dominant Holocaust narratives by foregrounding the disabled victims of a war that used them as human guinea pigs, while “Curating for Change” empowers disabled curators to reclaim storytelling through lived experience. However, interviews and anecdotal conversations with industry members reveal institutional barriers, including funding constraints and a reluctance to treat disability history as core content rather than a “special” topic.
My research shows that temporary exhibitions, while valuable, reinforce disability history as optional rather than fundamental. Permanent exhibitions would:
1) Ensure consistent representation beyond token events like Disability History Month
2) Provide ongoing access for education and research
3) Shift museums from performative inclusion to structural change
Crucially, permanent exhibitions reject “inspiration porn” by centring ordinary disabled lives - not as medical curiosities or objects of pity, but as historical agents. They also create sustainable opportunities for disabled leadership in heritage, moving beyond one-off consultations to institutional transformation. The study concludes that permanent disability history exhibitions are essential for museums to genuinely address ableism and fulfils their ethical obligations under the Equality Act and UNCRPD.
Looking at negatives from family camera from 1968-1969 with the light from living room windows.
Stories Rising to the Top: The Apna Heritage Archive
Kamal Badhey
The Apna Heritage Archive and Punjabi Workers collection from Wolverhampton, UK, is a digital photographic archive that contains family photographs from albums of the British Punjabi diaspora from the 1950s-1980s, many who have engaged in post-war factory work. These 2000 images are made by and depict families from the Black Country. They were collected by local community member and founder, Anand Chhabra, and made public on the Black Country Visual Arts website.
As a postgraduate researcher, documentary photographer, and community educator working with the Apna Heritage Archive and Punjabi Workers Collection, I engaged with community members connected to the archives and looked at their family albums with them. My research used a variety of methodologies dependent on the levels of comfort of the families that ranged from informal conversation, articulating diasporic positionality, oral history, and photo elicitation. The engagement processes included pre-interviews, singular interview sessions, choosing not to continue, and long-term engagement with multiple sessions and participatory methods. The culmination of work with some families of the archive includes a series of photographs that help us understand familial, community, and the transnational relevance of the archive.
The project’s oral and visual outcomes and approaches to intergenerational diasporic storytelling alongside images from the archive show the nuances of one multimodal project that uses oral history inclusive of informal conversation and oral storytelling, alongside heirlooms, photo albums, and objects of the personal archive.
“We will be soft and woollen and colourful”: Handknitted garments as resistance at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (1981-2000)
NEBYM:2018.29,
In an interview as part of my research project, Rebecca Mordan, a Greenham woman and the creator of Greenham Women Everywhere (2018) project, recounted the use of wool as tactical symbolism at Greenham: “[Greenham women] regularly, in their costume, in their action, in their art, constantly try to offer an opposite look to what they’re up against. So, you are hard and grey and concrete so we will be soft and woollen and colourful, and you are orderly and man-made, and we will be womanly and anarchic and of nature” (2024).
My research investigates the social and political weight of handknitted garments as protest tools at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (1981-2000) set up near Newbury in Britain. The anti-nuclear protest at Greenham was embedded in traditions of craft activism, in feminist debates of the time, and in ongoing reflections on construction of community and systems of care.
I build upon political scientist Catherine Eschle’s work (2017) on female figures in peace camps of the 1980s. Eschle identifies four gendered subjects in the peace camps: the ‘Mother,’ the ‘Radical Feminist,’ the ‘Lesbian,’ and the ‘Earth Mother.’ In addition to these four subjects, I argue for the presence of a fifth one, the ‘Knitter.’ Through analysis of Greenham women’s written and oral memoirs, photographs and textile objects, I explore the possibility of the ‘Knitter’ figure whose role is, similarly to the myth of the tricoteuses of post-revolutionary France, to sit at ground zero of major historical events and knit to record memory.
Lisa Hinkins, Harriett Elphinstone-Dick, 2020, automaton, Queer the Pier exhibition, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.
Where are all the Lesbians?
In Search of Lesbian Lives in Museums
AHRC Techne Collaborative Doctoral
Award with the Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust
Lisa Hinkins
Amy K. Levin (2010) stated that in museum work, there is little evidence of the contribution of lesbians to society, and that this mirrors the silences, gaps, and distortions of lesbian lives in LGBTQ+ histories in general. Museums are about people. The collections are manifestations of human desire. But some human desires have been ignored, resulting in little or no representation in these institutions.
The central aim of my project is to investigate how the Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust (RPMT) represents lesbian lives and identities within its collections and archive records. The project draws on museum studies, art history, material and visual culture, gender, and sexuality studies to utilize an intersection of methodologies: archive and catalogue research and analysis of LGBTQ+ displays informed by autoethnography and autotheory.
I am in the process of developing workshops and an exhibition at RPMT with trans-generational lesbian women participants. These will stimulate a spectrum of voices and viewpoints, responding to any material objects created and/or owned by lesbians in the collections, empowering those involved as active partners of the institution. In the absence of objects, we will create automata machines. Historically, men developed these self-operating machines to depict women – ‘artificial eves’ (Wosk, 2015). I created an automaton as a kinetic, interactive display to connect visitors to the life of Victorian swimmer and lesbian Harriett Elphinstone-Dick, for Brighton Museum’s ‘Queer the Pier’ exhibition.
The project will present solutions to RPMT for improved content in its collections catalogue software and provide a framework to inform future decisions for broader inclusion and representation that other institutions could utilise for mapping similar outreach and research in their collections.
Doll, c.1906, Korea, wood, cloth, pigment, 22 x 17 x 2 cm. Collected by Dr C. C. Vinton [1906-Expedition], 70.0/243. American Museum of Natural History. Photograph by Lina Shinhwa Koo.
Crafting National Images: The
Development of Korean Dolls between the 1890s and the 1950s
Lina Shinhwa Koo
My PhD project examines the evolution and development of Korean dolls from the 1890s to the 1950s, focusing on how they functioned as mediums for creating and disseminating images of Korea in Euro-American countries. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, when Korea opened its ports and started engaging with foreign visitors, locally made dolls depicting Korean people
emerged. These dolls, crafted from materials such as wood, textile, and paper, were primarily produced for foreign customers. They conveyed information about Korean culture through their dress and the activities they portrayed.
During the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945), Imperial Japan actively promoted the tourism industry in Korea, aiming to generate economic profits from the colony. As part of this effort, Korean dolls were modeled after various types of Japanese dolls and were labeled as Joseon pungsok inhyeong (Joseon folk dolls). These dolls were commonly sold at souvenir shops located near popular tourist sites and train stations with high foreign visitor traffic. Following the division of Korea and the Korean War, both North and South Korean governments used Korean dolls as diplomatic gifts to strengthen alliances with other countries in the 1950s.
To investigate the historical and theoretical significance of Korean dolls, this research includes an object analysis of dolls housed in both Euro-American countries and Korea. The analysis explores their historical contexts, making processes, and the object biographies that reveal how these dolls have been perceived and valued over time.
Duplicates, Dispersal and Disposal in Museums
AHRC Techne Collaborative Doctoral Award with the British Museum
Anne Nielsen
When objects enter a museum, it is commonly assumed that they become part of a museum’s permanent collection, forever unique and irreplaceable. Yet the widespread accumulation of ‘duplicate’ objects by museums across the world throughout their history challenges this assumption. In the 1880s, for example, the British Museum compiled a list of over 900 so-called duplicates in its collection. Recent research has uncovered many more objects described as such since the mid-nineteenth century. In principle and in practice, these objects were available for exchange with other museums and disposed of in other ways. What does this mean for the status of museums as custodians of permanent collections?
The existence and continued presence of duplicates in museums constitutes an underrepresented area of research in museum literature today. Key research on duplicates, dispersal and exchanges to date has focused on singular collections and object types within a specific period in the nineteenth century. We lack a holistic examination through a wider lens spanning periods and collections to identify larger trends and practices. An investigation of the role of duplicates in the British Museum enables tracing of shifting attitudes and perceptions in British and European museums.
This PhD project considers how the study of duplicates over time can shape our understanding of museum practice today. Using a combination of archival research, object-led study and interviews, it investigates the changing meaning and significance of duplicates. What role, for example, did duplicates play in establishing and maintaining institutional and colonial networks? How can an analysis of historical duplicate practices inform contemporary debates surrounding restitution and disposal?
explorations
Cultures of Hand-knitting in North India: Provenance, Domesticity and Gendered Learning, c.1850-1960
Pragya Sharma
As an everyday domestic practice in India, hand-knitting from the subcontinent remains little explored from a historical standpoint. My PhD project traces the introduction and evolution of the craft in colonial and postcolonial India, situating it within the wider socio-cultural entanglements. The presentday positioning of knitting in India is closely intertwined with the British Empire and
the subsequent establishment of mission education. Although hand-knitting was learned and practised by all genders, the intergenerational skill was (and is) generally acquired through informal channels of learning, within the domestic spaces.
The earliest knitted object from India dates from the 1780s, a pair of long knitted wool gloves that belonged to Warren Hastings. The gloves are rendered in ornate motifs and patterns that demonstrate the ingenuity and skilfulness of the knitter. Similar objects, including socks and caps, are spread across museums in the UK, USA and India, all tracing their origins to the subcontinent.
My methodology encompasses object-based study, archival research and oral history interviews with knitters in India. Underpinned by the themes of material culture, domesticity and colonial history, the research interrogates the place and significance of knitting in North India from 1850 to 1980. This was a critical period which saw an increasing influence and adaptation of Western practices with the simultaneous positioning of post-colonial India as a crafts nation that drew emphasis on the traditional/folk crafts with the exclusion of the domestic crafts. After 1980, with the opening of India’s economy and the liberalization wave of 1991, the knitting landscape was influenced by a global appeal and continues to the present day.
Various
and recreation of Hastings gloves by Sue, a UK-based hobbyist.
Collection of historical museum object labels, found on objects previously considered ‘duplicate’ objects in the British Museum.
Illustration by author. Graphic depiction of the author’s silhouette as a disabled woman, composed of 56 disability models identified during the course of this research. Brighton, 2025.
Moving beyond Models: Embracing Nuanced Realities of Disability: Methodological Inquiry and Literature Review
Chantal Spencer
I am an intersectional feminist design academic and designer, centring the individual voices and uncertain realities of marginalised people to bring about meaningful change. My research critically examines how models of disability shape not only the management and perception of disability, but the very experience of being disabled. While critiquing models of disability have long been abundant within disability research and practice, there is little critique directed at the practice of modelling disability itself as a structural method for managing and producing knowledge.
Through the disciplinary lens of ontological design and systemic design, my research proposes that models of disability are not simply explanatory frameworks but designed artefacts that shape the very systems and realities they aim to define. It considers this alongside the principles of disability justice and design justice, both of which assert that all designed things benefit some people and disadvantage others according to existing social structures and axes of power. These models, therefore, reflect and reproduce the values and biases of those who design them.
While extensive scholarship exists in the fields of disability models, intersectional feminism, and ontological design, there is currently no work that brings these three strands together to examine the systemically embedded issues surrounding models of disability, nor to offer real-world examples of what working beyond models might look like in practice. My work identifies this intersection as an urgent, underexplored space with the potential to reimagine disability-related research and practice in radically inclusive ways.
Supervisors and Students
Supervisors
2024-2025
Dr Harriet Atkinson
Dr Sue Breakell
Dr Verity Clarkson
Dr Veronica Isaac
Dr Yunah Lee
Professor Darren Newbury
Dr Charlotte Nicklas
Dr Ceren Özpınar
Professor Annebella Pollen
Dr Megha Rajguru
Dr Suzanne Rowland
Dr Eliza Tan
Dr Claire Wintle
BA (Hons) Art History and Visual Culture
Mia Bishton
Maddison
Brathwaite - Richards
Alicia Curran
Ella Hack
Maizie Hegarty-Woods
Alexandra Laveglia
Neve Lloyd Owen
Eden Parsley
Scarlett Swinnerton
BA (Hons) Fashion and Design History
Avery Chamberlain
Eden Cronin
Grace Dowle
Lucy Foley-Farnsworth
Megan Glass
Tiziri Hadjmahfoud-Hope
Ellie Haynes
Emily Hetherington
Charlotte Knight
Lily Moreno-Sheridan
Rebecca Tymchak
Mahtab Vasigh Moghaddam
Isabel Weaver
Lilly Bootsabong Wongsarak
Annie Wright
BA (Hons)
MA Curating Collections PhD
History of Art and Design and Heritage
Niamh Carden
Josh Boyle
Suchitra Dorothy Chatterjee
Kamal Badhey
Aurore Damoiseaux
Lisa Hinkins
Lina Shinhwa Koo
Anne Nielsen
Pragya Sharma
Chantal Spencer
The University of Brighton community of Arts and Humanities courses, staff and student evolved from the Brighton School of Art founded in 1859.
For 2025-26 entry, the History of Art and Design programme offers the following degrees:
BA (Hons) Art History and Visual Culture
BA (Hons) Fashion and Design History
MA Curating Collections and Heritage
MA History of Design and Material Culture
PhD in History of Art and Design
PhD in Design Studies
PhD in Visual Culture and affiliated inter-disciplinary research
For further information, please contact the university on 01273 644644, enquiries@brighton.ac.uk or visit the University of Brighton website: brighton.ac.uk
To follow History of Art and Design programme activities and communications, please see: blogs.brighton.ac.uk/hoad twitter.com/hoadbrighton instagram.com/hoad_brightonuni instagram.com/brighton_curating instagram.com/uob_ma_historyofdesign instagram.com/centrefordesignhistory
This catalogue has been designed by Jo Harrison jo-harrison.co.uk
