Jane Anne Malcolm-Davies

Kort præsentation

I am an associate professor at the Centre for Textile Research with a particular interest in the history of knitting. My Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship, which brought me to Copenhagen in 2015, has resulted in a new protocol for the scientific study of evidence for early knitting and a series of articles in the Archaeological Textile Review (no 60) which publish knitted items from the 16th and 17th century items. I have also designed and published an online database showcasing the 100+ knitted caps I studied - visit www.kemeresearch.com. I am also interested in the therapeutic effects of knitting which is central to my role in THREAD, an Innovation Fund Denmark sponsored "Grand Solution" which aims to provide opportunities for women refugees through an extensive network built around textile craft and culture.

Interesseområder

I have designed and/or developed relational databases (including the online costume resource www.tudoreffigies.co.uk and two in-house facilities for researching images of 16th century children’s dress and interrogating references to dress in 16th century British wills and inventories). Results drawn from these databases are published in Textiles and text: re-establishing the link between archival and object-based research (2007), The Tudor Child: clothing and culture 1485 to 1625 (2013), and The Typical Tudor (forthcoming - see below).

Before coming to Copenhagen, I was a heritage interpretation consultant running my own business, JMD&Co,and lecturer in business management and research methods. My doctoral research established a reliable method for measuring the effectiveness of front-of-house presentation at heritage sites. My methodology had immediate commercial application and I established a consultancy to provide benchmarking services for major heritage organisations such as Historic Scotland. It has since been used to allocate scarce resources at World Heritage Sites such as Edinburgh Castle, the Roman Baths in Bath, and Skara Brae, part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney.

I was a postdoctoral research fellow at Aalto University in Helsinki, the University of the Highlands & Islands (Centre for Interpretation Studies) and the University of Southampton (Textile Conservation Centre). I lectured in entrepreneurship and leisure management at the University of Surrey (to August 2014), introduced costumed interpreters at Hampton Court Palace (1992 to 2004), and coordinated training for the front-of-house team at Buckingham Palace each summer (2000 to 2010).

I am also co-director of The Tudor Tailor, which researches and retails publications and products aimed at improving reproduction historical dress for pedagogical projects. Since 2005, my co-director Ninya Mikhaila and I have built a collaborative team of dress historians with whom we publish books on the reconstruction of 16th century dress. Our next book The Typical Tudor will draw on my knitting research to provide instructions for making everyday garments. These will build on patterns for boys’ headwear and babies' knitwear available in The Tudor Child. I was co-author and editor of The Tudor Tailor: reconstructing sixteenth century dress (2006), a pioneering book which brings together the social history of dress and instructions for making early modern garments based on primary sources. It has sold more than 10,000 copies worldwide.

I have a postgraduate diploma in law (2012) and have volunteered for Citizens Advice in the UK for several years providing support for clients who cannot afford professional legal advice and campaigning for changes to social policy which affect the disadvantaged.

I was a keynote speaker at Malmö University's Public Medievalism conference (2018) in Sweden and Colonial Williamsburg’s conference A Reconstructed Visitable Past in Virginia, United States (2011), giving two papers on the challenges of reconstructing historic dress for visitor experiences at historic sites. In 2002, I organised and chaired a prestigious study day at the V&A Museum, London in association with The Costume Society of Great Britain to complement the controversial Men in Skirts exhibition. I also published a commentary on the exhibition in Fashion Theory (2003).