I am currently a Research Fellow at in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at ACU Melbourne. I have previously held research and teaching positions at the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney and the University of Western Australia.
Current Projects:
The Whaling Trade, Gender and Fashionable Consumer Goods in Early Modern Europe
This project examines one of the key turning points in fashion, trade and industry: the widespread use of whale products such as baleen, spermaceti and ambergris in clothing and decorative arts between 1500-1800. It will utilise records in British and French collections, alongside experimental and interdisciplinary methodologies, to trace the journey these commodities took from whale to toilette and the multiple hands, both male and female, that they passed through to get there. This study offers a critical reassessment of the global early modern whaling trade by focusing on the fashionable goods that it produced and how gendered assumptions mediated the demand for and perceived value of these consumer goods, as well as the ecological effects of their consumption.
Women and the Clothing Trades, 1550-1700
This project examines the varied roles that women played in the making, selling and sourcing of, as well as caring for, clothing in the seventeenth century. I’m exploring how women participated in more “masculine” trades such as tailoring during the seventeenth century, as well as the female artisans who clothed England’s Stuart queens from 1603 to 1714.
Past Projects:
Shaping Femininity
Read more here.
The Gendered Materiality of War
From 2018-2020 I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Western Australia, working on the ARC-funded project Gendering the Italian Wars. My role in the project examined the movement of elite fashions across Europe during this tumultuous period of the sixteenth century. My work focuses on how items of material culture, namely hat badges (enseignes) and armour, were utilised in order to project princely power and military prowess by those involved in the Habsburg-Valois Wars such as Charles V and Francis I.
I do not use social media, perhaps being old. I read your article in Renaissance Studies on the farthingale and have a burning question. Please would you drop me a note?
Hi Jane! Thanks for your comment. If you go to the contact me page and send me an email via the contact form, I’ll be more than happy to chat more! 🙂