Dress in Context

Research Centre

Dr Joanna Jarvis

Joanna’s background is in designing and making period costume for performance. She has combined her studies of dress in the eighteenth-century with an interest in women’s attitudes to self-presentation through their clothes and current theories on the psychology of dress. This combination is providing a rich field of study with reference to women in the eighteenth-century.

Joanna’s doctoral thesis took the audience and performers at the London Opera House in the late eighteenth century as a starting point. She examined the status of the women in the audience and the performers on the stage and their position in society. She conducted an analysis of their self-presentation through dress, discussing the psychological aspects of their decisions and how these were affected by social mores of the time. Her PhD was completed in April 2020.

Dr Joanna Jarvis