African Textile Archives

This Research & Knowledge Exchange Doctoral Project brief summarises our priority areas of research interest under the heading of: African Textile Archives: Traditions and Sustainable Visions (Collecting, Archives and Research as Creative Practice)

We welcome all research degree applications aligned with and in response to this brief.

The landmark Africa Fashion exhibition at the V&A highlights opportunities for original research into interconnections between African dress, adornment, colonialism, decolonisation and diaspora. Subjects embodied in African textiles located in national museum, private and family archives. The project will analyse a particular type of located African textiles that has received limited or no exposure and will serve as a conduit into understanding a collection or archives social, cultural and political meanings. The scope of this approach is explicit when considered in the context of the publications, Africa Fashion, Cloth and Human Experience and African Material Culture. 

The project may create, identify an original, or re-evaluate an existing African textile archive; either in Africa or elsewhere. The analysis will seek to understand the collections agency in colonial, decolonising or diaspora contexts. A paradigm shift in the conceptualisation, articulation, interpretation and classification of African textiles is expected to elucidate race, discrimination, freedom struggles and gender narratives.  

Theoretical and methodological approaches will draw on a combination of subject disciplines which may include African studies; visual research methods from anthropology, fashion and dress, photography; theoretical perspectives from colonial, decolonisation research studies; taxonomy and ontology. Research as creative practice will be intrinsic leading to exhibition and publication expectations. 

Projects deriving from this brief are expected to sit within the Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy and the following department.

All successful research degree project proposals must emphasise a clear alignment between the project idea and our Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy.