Dr Carole Hunt

Carole has interdisciplinary background in design and art history with a focus on clothing and textiles within the visual arts. She is published in the areas of identity, social history, heritage, health and well-being relating to dress and textiles. Carole is responsible for the leadership of the Critical Studies modules across fashion and textile disciplines. She is also supervisor to several PhD students across the School of Art Design and Fashion. She welcomes research proposals that transcend the disciplinary boundaries of dress and textiles. She is founder of the research group ‘Cloth, Clothing and Culture’, a critical platform for researchers who share a multifaceted view of clothing and textiles. Carole advocates inquiry-based learning in her teaching.

Before joining the University of Central Lancashire in 2014, Carole originally worked as a clothing and textile designer in the West End of London. A change of career led to her working within the field of arts and health in London and North West England. Following the completion of her Masters in Art History at the University of Central Lancashire, Carole embarked on an academic career. She taught Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Central Lancashire before going on to complete her PhD at the University of Leeds. Her Doctoral thesis, ‘Re-Tracing the Archive -Materialising Memory’, examined clothing through a dual perspective: as material object and as visual arts medium to express private and public memory. Carole’s research is focused on interrogating dress and textile collections of archives and museums to examine women’s social and cultural histories. Her approach is rooted in historical and theoretical frameworks but draws on several other fields of inquiry; for example, material culture and social psychology.

She has spoken at several conferences on the theme of clothing and communication in relation to gender, identity, history and memory. She is on board of the Lottery Funded Arts and Heritage project, Whittingham Lives; a project exploring the history and legacy of Preston’s Whittingham Asylum, from its opening in 1873 to its final demolition in 2016. Carole co-curated, and contributed to the Whittingham Lives: Hidden Histories - Alternative Futures exhibition at Preston’s the Harris Museum and Art Gallery in 2018. The exhibition combined creative responses and personal experiences with social, cultural and historical observations. The aim being to examine changing attitudes towards mental distress, past, present and future.