Becoming Association of Dress Historians Student Fellow

Final year Fashion and Dress History student Emmy Sale reports on becoming an Association of Dress Historians Student Fellow

This month, I was elated to be the recipient of an Association of Dress Historians (ADH) Student Fellowship. For those of you who don’t know of the charity, ADH aims to support the advancement of public knowledge and education of dress and textile history and is particularly committed to supporting students of dress history. In order to fulfil this mission, they founded the Student Fellowships.

My Fellowship for ADH involves taking care of their social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) in order to build up their online presence. The power of social media cannot be understated; it is a great way to engage with museums, online archives and dress historian communities to keep up to date with new research, exhibitions and articles. Through regular posts relating to the charity’s events and conferences I will be promoting the charity but also directly learning the impact of social media and engaging with the promotion of dress history through these platforms. Already, posting more regularly has made an impact as the ADH New Research in Dress History conference has sold out!

The Fellowship is not only an opportunity to experience how the charity is run, by assisting at the conferences and attending committee meetings, but also to contribute to it. I am required to write blog posts for the ADH website that will reflect my research interests, exhibition reviews and ADH events; and I am also encouraged to develop an article for the Journal of Dress History. These are great opportunities to get research published by the charity, but also to contribute to the field of dress history that I am passionate about and would like to progress in.

Overall, I believe that being an ADH Student Fellow will be invaluable to the progression of my skills, interests and achievements; as well as showing a commitment and passion for the subject of dress history to future employers. Organisations like ADH are important to supporting both the study of and students of dress history, so to be able to represent the charity in order to share its key aims is a real honour.