The Association of Dress Historians supports and promotes the study and professional practice of the history of dress, textiles, and accessories of all cultures and regions of the world, from before classical antiquity to the present day.

International Conferences

The Association of Dress Historians is delighted to announce our international conferences.

Please join us for exciting days of scholarship in dress history!

Winter 2020/2021:
This winter, ADH members are invited to join the inaugural Lecture & Conversation Series via the virtual platform zoom. The series will bring together Lectures from emerging scholars studying or practicing within the fields of dress history and fashion studies, along with Conversations from authors of articles published in The Journal of Dress History. Our hope is to create a space for ADH members to shed light on particular topics within both dress history and fashion studies, and for the exchange of knowledge to be facilitated at a time when in–person conferences and networking events are challenging to hold. These events are free to ADH members. If you’re not yet an ADH member but would like to attend, please purchase an ADH membership (only £10 per year) at https://dresshistorians.org/membership. For more information and for the series programme, please view this page.

8-13 June 2021:
The ADH will host The New Research in Dress History conference, virtually via zoom, during 8-13 June 2021. It will be a true virtual “festival” of New Research in Dress History, with hundreds of international participants. Please join us! Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this international conference will now feature the New Research conference speakers who were originally scheduled to present at the ADH in-person conferences during 2020 at The Röhsska Museum of Design and Craft in Gothenburg, Sweden and at The Art Workers Guild in London, England. On Sunday, 13 June 2021, the New Research conference will feature a whole day of speakers who were scheduled to present at the ADH conference, titled, Costume Drama: A History of Clothes for Stage and Screen, which had been scheduled as an in-person conference at the Bristol Old Vic, the oldest continuously working theatre in the English–speaking world. For our 8-13 June 2021 conference, a programme will be published soon, which will include all speakers’ presentation abstracts and biographies. During 8-13 June 2021, all of the conference presentations will be live; none will be recorded during the conference for later listening. So, please mark your calendar for this special conference. Just one ticket entitles entry to all days of the conference. The conference ticket purchasing page is https://tinyurl.com/June2021.

21–22 October 2021:
This is the date for our International Conference of Dress Historians, titled, Curation and Conservation: Dress and Textiles in Museums. The conference will be held at the Conservation and Restoration Center (CCR) “La Venaria Reale,” one of the most important Italian institutes for higher education, research, and conservation of cultural heritage, in Turin, Italy. (The Call For Papers submission deadline is 1 December 2020.)

30 September-1 October 2022:
This is the date for our International Conference of Dress Historians, titled, Fashioning the Body for Sport and Leisure: A History of Dress and Textiles, which will be held at the historic Art Workers Guild, 6 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AT, England. (The Call For Papers submission deadline is 1 September 2021.)