Art That Made Us

Quick post to alert you all to the first episode of the new OU-BBC Co-production ‘Art That Made Us’, which will be broadcast this evening (Thursday 7th April) on BBC2 at 9pm. I am an academic consultant on the series, which has been an absolutely brilliant experience! It’s a great series. Be sure to tune…

New Chinese Propaganda pages on the British Library website

Great news! The British Library now has an online guide to the Chinese Propaganda poster collection, which includes a downloadable list of posters with their shelfmarks, based on the catalogue I put together at the end of last year.    

Draft programme: The Museum in the Global Contemporary: Debating the Museum of Now

The draft programme for the forthcoming Leicester Museum Studies Fiftieth Anniversary Conference is now available on the ‘Global Contemporary’ website (where you can also book a place). Me and Malika Kraamer will be presenting a paper – ‘Unplaced heritage: Making identity through fashion’ – on Wednesday, 20th April, which is based on the chapter we’re…

What makes a good museum? The Art Fund knows

Some time ago I was commissioned by The Conversation to write a short article on the Art Fund prize. Thanks to The Conversation’s open access policy and use of Creative Commons licenses, I am free to republish the article here (originally published July 11, 2014). Image: Yorkshire Sculpture Park (the winner of the 2014 Museum of the…

Academic activities: an update

In the last week I’ve: been on four trains; visited London and Sheffield; given two presentations; re-evaluated my future career plans; and eaten some fantastic food courtesy of the AHRC. Last Monday I travelled down to the British Library once more (but hopefully not for the last time) to hand over the final version of the catalogue…

‘Japanese Saris: Dress, Globalisation and Multiple Migrants’

The paper that Malika Kraamer and myself recently published in Textile History is finally available online [requires institutional access]. Based on primary research undertaken for the Cultural Olympiad exhibition, ‘Suits and Saris’, the paper looks at: … the phenomenon of Japanese saris — fashion-forward synthetic saris manufactured in Japan — and Leicester sari shop owners’ role in…

‘From Red Guards to Bond villains’

I was recently interviewed by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore for a BBC online article about the Mao suit (Zhong shan fu 中山服). The article has recently been published and you can read it here. Image from the WBUR Boston’s NPR News Station’s Flickr photostream and used under a Creative Commons license.

Hersay

I’ve recently signed up to the Hersay network, which aims to raise the profile of female specialists in the broadcast media.  My Hersay profile