Suzanne Rowland

Dr Suzanne Rowland is a Lecturer in Fashion and Design History in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Brighton. She is a material culture scholar and interdisciplinary theorist with broad research interests in fashion design, manufacturing, and cross-class consumption from the early nineteenth century to the present day. With a background as a costume maker in film and theatre, she is particularly interested in how dress is manufactured and its corporeal relationship to the body. Her AHRC/Design Star PhD research investigated the design and wholesale manufacturing of women’s fashionable blouses during the 1910s through material culture, Actor-Network Theory, and storytelling. She is currently working on her monograph, The Blouse: Fashion, Manufacturing and Social Change for Women in Britain, 1890-1920.

Suzanne is co-manager of the dress history focused Teaching Collection Teaching Collection

Suzanne co-leads the Fashion, Dress and Textile History strand of The Centre for Design History, University of Brighton Centre for Design History

Member of the following professional networks:

Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

‘Tailored Clothes for Women’ research project supported by University of Brighton and European Research group Apparences, Corps et Sociétés http://gis-acorso.com/  

19^th Century Dress and Textiles Reframed https://c19thdressandtextilesreframed.wordpress.com

I am interested in supervising doctoral projects broadly relating to design, consumption, manufacturing and business in fashion and textiles, and the collection and display of dress in museums. I welcome enquiries about the application of creative research methodologies, including dress reconstruction and storytelling.