Elizabeth Kramer is a design historian specialising in transnational fashion, textiles and material culture with a specialisation in fashion and textile exchanges between Japan and Britain. She became a member of the Visual and Material Culture Group after joining Northumbria University in 2009.
Elizabeth is interested in how the materiality of garments can be used to understand cultural flows and transcultural identities, as demonstrated in her recent articles investigating the meanings of the mainstream global fashion trends for the kimono jacket (Fashion Theory 2019) and souvenir jacket (International Journal of Fashion Studies 2020). Currently she is investigating how historians might use fashion garments in a decolonial approach to global/historical studies. For example, her contribution as Co-Investigator to the AHRC-funded network, ‘Fashion and Translation: Britain, Japan, China Korea’ (2014-15), led to her involvement as one of the lead authors on Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk (2020), which accompanied an exhibition by the same name at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk was the first exhibition in Britain to present the historic and contemporary kimono as a fashionable rather than traditional garment. She has received funding from the AHRC, Pasold Foundation, British Academy, Design History Society and College Art Association to support her research activities.
At Northumbria, Elizabeth teaches historical and critical studies to undergraduate students across the Interior Design, Fashion Design, Design for Industry and 3D Design Programmes in the School of Design, in addition to supervising MRes and PhD students in Art and Design History.
Further information can be found on academia.edu: https://northumbria.academia.edu/ElizabethKramer