Profile
Dr Thomas Cooper
Profile
Before coming to Oxford, I studied at The Courtauld Institute of Art (BA and MA), and then earned my PhD in History of Art at the University of Cambridge, which I was awarded in 2024. The subject of my thesis was a monographical study of the career and work of the artist, lecturer and writer, May Morris (1862-1938). At Cambridge, I was a Pigott Scholar, and in 2022 I also held the Joseph R. Dunlap Memorial Fellowship, administered by the William Morris Society in the United States.
- Research
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I am a cultural historian interested in objects (broadly defined and including what we often call art) and making practices, and how these have been written about and interpreted across time. My current research focuses on artistic and intellectual histories of textiles. At Lincoln, I am working on a new project that examines the contributions of women historians, collectors, makers, teachers and museum workers to the development of textile scholarship in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I am also writing a book manuscript, currently titled 'May Morris: Worlds of Making', which is based on my doctoral research.
- Select publications
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‘May Morris, Egypt, and Coptic Textiles’, Art History, Vol. 47, No. 1, 2024, 98-124: https://doi.org/10.1093/arthis/ulae004
‘Arts and Crafts Movement’, Oxford Bibliographies in Victorian Literature, 2024: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199799558-0205
‘A “Morris room” in Cardiff: Mary Lobb and the National Museum of Wales’, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 165, No. 1441, 2023, 418-421
‘Kendon, Margery Maud Gildersleeve [other name Marjorie Kendon]’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, June 2022: https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000380742
Position
- HR Woudhuysen Junior Research Fellow in Material Culture