Peter McNeil: Principal Investigator 3

Research interests:

Design History; inter-relationships between visual and literary forms, Historiography of Fashion Research; cross-cultural perspectives

Research Profile:

Peter McNeil is Professor of Design History at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. In 2008 he was appointed concurrently as Foundation Chair of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University. Trained as an art and design historian, his research crosses disciplines, chronologies and geographies. This research has engaged with different ways in which visual imagery and materiality shaped lives from the eighteenth century to the present day. His research strengths are in relationships between high and low aesthetic forms (the portrait and the caricature, for example), the historical representation of fashion goods ranging from clothing to furnishings; and the inter-relationship between genres including history painting, sculpture, portrait painting, print-making, ephemera and the decorative arts of the 18th to 20th centuries, and the commercial art and photography of the 19th and 20th centuries. McNeil has a long-term interest in the relationship of scholarship to museum studies. He has published in academic journals including Art History, Journal of Design History, Fashion Theory, Teori Moda (Russia), History Today, Journal of Australian Studies and La Trobe Library Journal. Current projects range from a collaborative investigation of place and memory within the clothing trades in Sydney, c1890-1980, to the study of 18^th-century English and French men’s fashion and print culture. From 2006-2010 he served as President of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, representing Art History in that region.

Select Publications:

Nordic Fashion Studies (with Louise Wallenberg, eds), Axl, Stockholm, 2011 (in press).

‘Easton Pearson: Old Empire or New Global Luxury?’ in G. Adamson, G. Riello and S. Teasley (eds), Global Design History, Routledge, 2011.

The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives, 2010 (Routledge; with G. Riello).

‘Caricatura e Moda: Storia di una Presa in Giro’, Italian Fashion Studies Handbook, eds. M. G. Muzzarelli and E. T. Brandi (eds.), Storie di Moda /Fashion-able Histories, Milan, Bruno Mondadori, 2010.

Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources, Renaissance to the Present Day (4 Vols.), Berg, 2009.

Fashion in Fiction. Text and Clothing in Literature, Film and Television (with V. Karaminas & C.Cole), Oxford and New York: Berg, 2009.

The Men’s Fashion Reader, Berg, 2009 (with V. Karaminas).

‘Libertine Acts: Fashion and Furniture’, in J. Potvin (ed), The Places and Spaces of Fashion, 1800-2007, Routledge, New York and London, 2009, pp. 154-165.

Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers, Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006 (with G. Riello) [ as Scarpe: Dal Sandalo Antico alla Calzatura d’Alta Moda, Venice, Angelo Colla editore, 2007].

‘The art and science of walking: mobility, gender and footwear in the long eighteenth century’, Fashion Theory, 9/2 (2005), pp. 175-204 (with G. Riello).

Everlasting: The Flower in Fashion and Textiles, exh. Catalogue (curator R. Leong), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005.

‘Refashioning the Elites’, in The Enlightenment World, eds. M. Fitzpatrick, P. Jones, C. Knewllwolf and I. McCalman, London & New York, Routledge, 2004, pp. 381-400.