Our Members

  Avery Brock is a recent graduate of University College London with an MA in Museum Studies from the Institute of Archaeology. Avery also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and a Minor in International Studies from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio....

Debadrita Saha is a PhD student in English Literature at Ashoka University, India, specializing in postcolonial ecofeminism and Indian women's eco-fiction. She was formerly an Assistant Professor at Brainware University. Her research interests include environmental...

Anya Griffiths (she/her) is a historian of medicine and consumer culture in Eighteenth and Nineteenth century Britain. Following completion of her undergraduate degree at the University of Manchester’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Anya...

Sridevi Gopakumar is a marketing researcher based in Chennai, India, and is in the final stages of completing her PhD at Loyola Institute of Business Administration. Her doctoral research examines how greenwashing tactics in the beauty and personal care industry shape...

    Jaina Hunt is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Portsmouth, specialising in early modern women’s history with a particular focus on beauty culture in Tudor England. Her doctoral thesis, Pretty and Privileged: Never-married Women, Beauty and...

    Eileen G’Sell is a culture critic, poet, and scholar with recent contributions to The Hopkins Review, Reverse Shot, Hyperallergic, and Jacobin. Her first book of poetry, Life After Rugby, was published in 2018; her second poetry volume, Francofilaments,...

  Montserrat Cabré is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cantabria, Spain. Since the 1990s, she has been working on the care of the female body in medieval culture, paying special attention to its visibility and how cosmetics and adornment...

Katherine Aske is a Lecturer of English Literature at Edinburgh Napier University (ENU). Her research examines understandings and moral associations of female beauty in the literature and cultural history of the long eighteenth century, and is currently working on the...

Romana Sammern is an art historian and permanent research scholar at the University of Salzburg. She researches and teaches at the intersection of the body, art, cosmetics, and medicine in the early modern period, with relevance to the present. She received her PhD...

Erin Griffey is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Auckland and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. She is a specialist in early modern visual and material culture with an interest in adornment and display. Her current research relates to...

    I am an early career historian with an interest in material culture, extreme environments, bodily and psychological comfort, and colonialism in the long nineteenth-century Anglophone world. I earned my BA in Anthropology with a minor in Art History at...

  With over 30 years of experience, Alicia Schult is an expert in the history of receipts, apothecaries, cosmetics, alchemy, and historical clothing. As the owner and founder of LBCC Historical Apothecary, she has dedicated her life to bringing to light lost and...

  I am a practising artist with a critical interest in stardom, and feminine aesthetics (particularly makeup). I won the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2016 and exhibit my work widely. In September 2023 I was awarded a PhD in film studies from Queen Mary...

    I’m Professor of Renaissance Visual and Material Culture at the University of Edinburgh and am a historian, writer and (occasional) curator. I’ve published books and articles about art patronage, the nude and various other topics relating to fifteenth...

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick. My main research interest is the history of tanning technologies (i.e., sunbeds, fake tan, tanning pills and Melanotan injections), beauty and health industries, mass...

Jackie Lalumandier is an up and coming student, planning to go to NYU Steinhardt to get an MA in Costume Studies. She currently has studied fashion design, but has a degree in photography. While pursuing different careers, her interest in cosmetic history came about...

I am training as a socio-legal scholar and historian of law, gender, and toxicity in twentieth-century Canada. Currently, I am pursuing a PhD in law at Kent Law School at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK. My thesis explores Canadian cosmetics regulation, with...

Saffron Sparmann is a Stockholm-based writer with a BA in fashion theory and a background in feminist & LGBT organizing. She’s particularly interested in how beauty shapes and is shaped by the lives of women, and the relationship between politics and aesthetics.

Graduated in Biology (CNAM 1974), Jean Claude LE JOLIFF has been successively in charge of R&D, then Innovation in a major French cosmetics and luxury group, the Bourjois/Chanel group, being now Chanel. From 1970-2000, he strongly contributed to the launch of many...

Lauren Alex O'Hagan I am a Research Fellow in the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University (UK) and an Affiliate Researcher in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Örebro University (Sweden). My current project is entitled...

I am a cultural historian of race and beauty in twentieth-century Britain, United States and the Caribbean. My current project is an inclusive history of complexion seen through the lens of specific beauty processes and body modification, such as suntanning,...

Camille Lawrence (she/her). Archivist, Curator, Consultant. Founder of Black Beauty Archive. Camille Lawrence's work as an archivist focuses on the art history, innovations, and diversity of artistic expression across the African Diaspora. She is most interested in...

I am an early-career historian of the British Empire focusing on race, gender, embodiment, and corporeal consumption in South Asia. I completed my BA in English and History and MA in Contemporary History and International Politics at the University of York before...

Sarah Jane Downing is an author and freelance journalist with a particular passion for the history of fashion and beauty. Great events are fascinating for how they have shaped the path of history, but she prefers to take the intimate view from a closet or a dressing...

  Jessica Clark (B.A., Trent; M.A., York; M.A., Ph.D., Johns Hopkins) teaches courses in the history of Britain and its empire. Before joining the department, she taught at McGill, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Her research...