Carol Tulloch
Carol Tulloch is a writer, curator and Professor of Dress, Diaspora and Transnationalism at the University of the Arts London (UAL), based at Chelsea College of Arts. She is also a member of the Transnational Art, Identity and Nation Research Centre, and Chelsea College of Arts/V&A Fellow in Black Visual and Material Culture at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire of Jamaican parents, Carol trained as a fashion and textiles designer at Epsom College of Art and Design, and Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, and completed the V&A/RCA MA in the History of Design. These personal and professional experiences are the foundation of Carol’s research practice on the styled black body, extensively explored in her 2016 Bloomsbury monograph The Birth of Cool: Style Narratives of the African Diaspora. This expanded on her research as principle investigator of the Dress and the African Diaspora Network, and the V&A exhibition Black British Style.
Her research practice incorporates identity and difference, cultural heritage, belonging and being, auto/biography and personal archives, activism and agency within local, national and international contexts, concerns considered in her exhibitions Jessica Ogden: Still, The Flat Cloth Cap, Handmade Tales: Women and Domestic Crafts, The March of the Women: Suffragettes and The State.
Fundamentally, Carol’s work is interested in different social and cultural groups to compare experiences, and/or cultural collaborations with people of the African diaspora, an approach at the centre of the book and exhibition Syd Shelton: Rock Against Racism and the essay A Riot of Our Own: A Reflection on Agency.
This body of research supports PhD and undergraduate student studies at UAL. Other institutions have invited Carol to support their development or projects: she is a trustee of Autograph ABP; an advisor and consultant to a range of institutions that includes the British Council, Meat Consultancy, Mode Museum Antwerp, and Brighton Museum and Art Gallery; a chair and judge of The Women’s Hour Craft Prize; media appearances include Syd Shelton: Rock Against Racism Radio Helsinki, Good Golly, Bad Golly BBC Radio 4, ‘Tales from the Front Room’ BBC 4 and ‘Black British Style’, Newsnight Review BBC 2 television.
