Selected Professional Practice & Industry Work
Anna has been recognised for her high-quality teaching and has received an award for Outstanding Faculty Member at the University of Brighton. In 2026, the Costume Production department received special recognition for its outstanding performance in the NSS.
Awards, Recognition & Media Profile
Anna has received several funding awards to facilitate study, travel, and research. These include AHRC full-funding of her PhD and PhD Studentship Award at the University of Brighton; the Pasold Fund MA Research Bursary; the Boise Foundation Major Travel Scholarship, University College London; the Maud Foster Memorial Travel Scholarship, University College London; and the Italian Institute for Cultural Exchange Travel Abroad Study Scholarship, London.
Industry Collaborations & Partnerships
Anna has been a consultant for BBC Radio on fashion subjects.
Teaching & Mentorship
Anna teaches on the BA (Hons) Costume Production and BA (Hons) Design for Performance programmes, as well as several cross-disciplinary modules at Rose Bruford College.
Areas of specialism centre on the history of costume and fashion, and costume for performance. Her approach is emphatically object-based, and she embraces experimental archaeology, embodiment, and re-creative practices.
Her active research interests continue to inform her teaching practice, and strong links with museums, collections, and archives mean that students have access to a wider range of information. Anna regularly attends conferences and study days in the fields of costume and fashion, and she has strong connections with professionals in industry, education, and research.
Research & Knowledge Exchange
Anna is a founding member of a global research group, 19th Century Dress and Textiles Reframed (founded 2019), whose mission is to facilitate and promote new approaches to the study of dress and textiles in the long 19th century. In ‘re-framing’, the group seeks to widen the subject outwards by embracing the voices and experiences of scholars and makers from across genders, nationalities, and disciplines and to challenge myths and assumptions by producing and disseminating new research on complex histories in the field to a broader audience, including via their YouTube channel.
Each month, the group holds free online conferences with specialist speakers in the field, which are called ‘At Homes’. To date, the group has delivered over 40 At Homes, with 5,000+ attendees.
Anna’s current research projects include further investigation into abolitionists’ clothing, humanitarian and kinship networks in Britain and America in the nineteenth century, and the textile recycling industry. Published articles and chapters in edited volumes concern the above themes. She is also writing a semi-fictionalised account of her father’s unconventional upbringing in a Utopian non-conformist community in Sussex.
Professional Memberships
Publications / Research Outputs (selected)
2023 Chapter: ‘She Hath Done What She Could: The Charitable Work of Eleanor Clark of Street in the 1850s and the 1870s: Quaker Women’s Networks’, in Robynne Healy and Carole Spencer. (Eds.) New Critical Studies on Quaker Women, volume 2, 1800-1920, Philadelphia: Pa, Penn State University Press
2020 Review: Fashion, Agency and Empowerment. Annette Lynch and Katalin Medvedev. (Eds.) London: Bloomsbury Press, 2019, for Costume. Journal of the Costume Society (2020)
2018 Article: ‘Escape and Evasion: Dresses Made From Maps in the Second World War’ Objects Unwrapped. Online.
2018 Review: Moral Commerce: Quakers and the Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labour Economy. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, for Winterthur Portfolio, 51:4 (2018): 256-7.
2014 Article: ‘Quaker Women and Anti-Slavery Activism: Eleanor Clark and the Free Labour Cotton Depot in Street’, in Quaker Studies, 19:1 (September 2014): 137-156.
2014 Chapter: ‘Without the Consumers of Slave Produce There Would be no Slaves: Quaker Women, Antislavery Activism and Free-Labor Cotton Dress in the 1850s’ in Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank. (Eds.) Quakers and Abolition, Urbana, Ill. University of Illinois Press.
Academic Qualifications
2008-2012 – PhD in the History of Art & Design, in the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton. Thesis entitled: ‘Quaker Women, the Free Produce Movement and British Anti-Slavery Campaigns: The Free Labour Cotton Depot in Street 1853-1858’
2006-2007 – MA in the History of Design & Material Culture in the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton. Thesis entitled: ‘When Fashion Promoted Humanity: Messages and Meanings in the Wedgwood Slave Medallion 1787-1807’. Awarded distinction
1982-1984: Higher Diploma (MA) in Fine Art, Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, University of London. Awarded: Distinction.
1979-1982: BA Honours in Fine Art, Painting in the Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton. Awarded: First Class.
1978-1979: Foundation Studies at Central School of Art & Design, London. Awarded: Merit.
Additional
Conference Papers presented
2020: ‘Telling Stories Through Dress: Voices From the Past’, at C.19th Century Textiles and Dress Reframed “At Home”, 13 December, online event.
2019: ‘“Village Chronicle” and “Village Album”: The Hand-written Periodicals and Creative Expressions of the Clark Family’s Literary Society in the mid-Nineteenth Century’ at The Annual Conference of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, 27-29 July, University of Brighton.
2019: ‘Dressing Abolitionists and the Enslaved: Slave-Labour and Free-Labour Gingham Cloth in Carlisle in the 1850s’, at the Annual Conference of the Association of Art History (AAH), 2- 5 April, University of Brighton.
2018:‘Cotton and Antislavery: The Strange Story of Slave-Labour and Free-Labour Gingham Cloth in the 1850s’, at Costume Colloquium VI: Textiles in Fashion, Creativity in Context, 14-18 November, Florence, Italy.
2018: ‘A Case Study of a Module that Builds Confidence’, at Student Success Conference, 14 September, University of Brighton.
2016: with Dr Hannah Rumball, ‘Negotiating Simplicity and Extravagance in Nineteenth Century Quaker Dress: Restraint and Excess in the Clothing Worn by Eleanor Stephens Clark and Helen Bright Clark of Street’, at Costume Colloquium: Restraint and Excess, 16-19 November, Florence, Italy.
2016: ‘Free Labour Cotton and Radical Antislavery in the Domestic Lives of British Women Quakers in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, at Radical Histories/Histories of Radicalism, History Workshop Journal, 1-3 July, Queen Mary University of London.
2016: ‘The Charitable Work of Mrs Eleanor Clark of Street: The Olive Leaf Society and Grand Fancy Bazaars in the 1850s’, at the Annual Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists, 24-26 June, Woodbrooke Centre for Quaker Studies, University of Birmingham.
2014: ‘Wearing Anti-Slavery Activism: British Quaker Women and Free-Labour Cotton Dress in the 1850s’, at the History Lab Annual Conference, 13-14th June, Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
2013: ‘Cotton Anti-Slavery and Empire: Issues in the Atlantic Supply Chain for Free-Labour Cotton in the 1850s’, at the Pennsylvania Historical Society Annual Conference, 16-19th October, Gettysburg, USA.
2012: ‘The PhD Journey’ History Lab Symposium, Institute of Historical Research, 10th October, at the Institute for Historical Research, University of London.
2011: ‘Wearing Belief: Quakers and Free-Cotton in the 1850s’, at Developments in Dress History, 7-9th December, University of Brighton.
2010: ‘Wearing Belief: Women Quakers and the Free Produce Movement in Britain 1853-1858’, at Quakers and Slavery 1657-1865, 4-6th November, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges, Philadelphia, USA.
2010: ‘”Buy For the Sake of the Slave”: The Street Free Labour Cotton Depot 1853-1858’, at the Quaker History Group, 23rd October, the Religious Society of Friends, Friends’ House, London.
2009: ‘The Clarks of Street, Transatlantic Co-operation and the Free Produce Movement in Britain’, at Liberating Sojourn: Black Abolitionist Visitors to Britain, 23-25th April, Faculty of History, University of Liverpool.
2009: ‘The Clarks of Street, Transatlantic Co-operation and the Free Produce Movement in Britain’, Student Research Day, 10th October, Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton.
2009: ‘When Fashion Promoted Humanity: The Wedgwood Slave Medallion 1787-1807’, at the Brighton Postgraduate Design History Society Annual Conference, 6th June, University of Brighton
Supervisory interests
The histories of costume, fashion, and textiles. Humanitarianism, consumer activism and boycott histories. Abolitionism. Women’s political activism and political clothing culture.
