DrLorinda Cramer

I am a social and cultural historian exploring the gendered dimensions of dress and textiles, the worn and material histories of Australian wool, and historical examples of sustainable fashion and waste. With a decades-long professional background as a museum curator and collection manager, my research incorporates exhibitions, material culture and a close reading of 'things'. This research extends Australia’s dress and textile history, promotes innovative uses of material culture to understand daily life, offers scholarly interventions into gender and class history (including how these are presented in museum exhibitions), and tackles memory and affect.

My current research interests centre on Australian wool. The research for this project has been developed as a National Library of Australia Fellow and Powerhouse Museum Visiting Research Fellow, both for 2023, and as Redmond Barry Fellow for the State Library of Victoria's 2022 Fellowship Program. I am interested in the experiences of wearing wool and how the fibre was fashioned, particularly against the rise of synthetics in the twentieth century. I am also pursuing insights into wool's intersections with sustainable, circular fashion and wool 'waste'.

I have published my work in Australia and internationally for diverse audiences. This includes my book Needlework and Women's Identity in Colonial Australia (Bloomsbury) in 2020, as well as articles in leading history, dress history, gender history and heritage journals. I am a frequent media commentator on issues relating to Australian dress, sharing my knowledge on radio stations across Australia, and actively present on aspects of my research and areas of historical expertise to the public.