Home › Calls for & opportunities › Event: CIAD’s 2nd Biennial Conference: Textiles and Fabrics as Material Culture in the African Diaspora (10 October)

Event: CIAD’s 2nd Biennial Conference: Textiles and Fabrics as Material Culture in the African Diaspora (10 October)

By Africa in Words on 28 March , 2020 • ( 0 )

The Costume Institute of the African Diaspora’s (CIAD) 2nd Biennial Conference
London College of Fashion
New date: 10 October, 2020

Bringing together academics and researchers from across the world who are working within the field of Material Culture, African Fashion, Textiles and Film Studies Fibres, Threads and Fabrics: Textiles and Fabrics as Material Culture, CIAD’s second biennial conference will explore the ways communities within the African Diaspora shape and understand the world through the medium of textiles.

This conference will explore the ways communities within the African Diaspora shape and understand the world through the medium of textiles.

Photo on Pexels.com

About this Event
The Costume Institute of the African Diaspora’s second dress conference aims to understand how textiles and fabric creation, design and use can determine traditions, customs elements of social engagement and speak to the materiality of cultures and communities within the African Diaspora.

Material culture is the use of objects and artefacts as signifiers of social engagement and everyday life. This conference looks at how fabrics and textiles have been utilised within global communities of African heritage to document their social histories.

The idea is to bring together academics and researchers from across the world who are working within the field of Material Culture, African Fashion, Film Studies and Textiles. The work presented will look at the myriad of different factors which have affected the way people of African heritage have sought to develop and use textiles as a way to write their own stories.

Keynote speaker
Dr Carol Ann Dixon is a researcher and heritage consultant, affiliated to the University of Sheffield, with interests in African and Caribbean diaspora histories, cultural geographies, museology and contemporary visual art. Her doctoral dissertation – “The ‘othering’ of Africa and its diasporas in Western museum practices” (University of Sheffield, 2016) – examined changing curatorial approaches to the display and interpretation of cultural objects from the African continent in contrasting Western museum and gallery settings. You can find much more about Dr Carol Ann Dixon via her blog, Museum Geographies: https://museumgeographies.wordpress.com.