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Emma Pearce

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Emma Pearce

  • Lecturer in Design History & Theory
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ORCID
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0009-0005-2178-8102
Job Title
Lecturer in Design History & Theory
School or Academic Area
School of Design
Email
E.Pearce@gsa.ac.uk
Professional Address
2nd Floor, Barnes Building, 9-11 West Graham Street, Glasgow, G4 9LE

Biography

Dr Emma Pearce (she/her) is a Lecturer in Design History & Theory, with research specialisms in art and design history c.1750 to the present day. She completed her PhD in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, and holds degrees in History of Art from the University of York (BA) and the Courtauld Institute of Art (MA). Emma specialises in the history of Scottish-made textiles such as tartan, particularly in relation to the Caribbean and the Atlantic world, but also contemporary fashion design. Her research more broadly focuses on colonialism, the body, textiles, and, most recently, material culture made from animal bodies in relation to white colonial masculinity. Her research has been supported by the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Pasold Trust, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Winterthur Museum.

Research Interests

textile history; fashion history; visual culture; material culture; colonial history; Scotland; gender and masculinity; the body and design

PGR Supervision Interests

fashion; textiles; colonialism; Scottish studies; gender; material culture; queer studies

Teaching

Coordinator for cross-programme PGT School of Design course Design Research Methods
Input into all areas of Design History & Theory teaching for undergraduate School of Design:
Year 1 Designed Objects
Year 2 Pathway for Fashion Design and Fashion Narrative
Year 3 Concepts & Territories of Design
Year 4 Dissertation Supervision

Latest Additions

  1. Pearce, Emma (2025) Review: The Modern Venus: Dress, Underwear and Accessories in the Late 18th-Century Atlantic World. Textile History. pp. 283-284. ISSN 0040-4969
  2. Pearce, Emma (2025) Viewing Gloster: The Visual Culture of "Runaway" Advertisements in Eighteenth‑Century Jamaica. In: The Routledge Companion to Race in Early Modern Artistic, Material, and Visual Production. Routledge Art History and Visual Studies Companions . Routledge. ISBN 9781032312163 (hardback); 9781003308645 (eBook)
  3. Pearce, Emma (2024) Unraveling the Caribbean Origins, Makers, and Wearers of the Robe à la creole, c. 1780–1815. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 53. pp. 181-209. ISSN 1938-6133 (online); 0360-2370 (print)