School staff
Penelope Alfrey is Lecturer in the History of Art and Design at Loughborough University. She studied for a pre-diploma in art at Wimbledon School of Art, Art History at Edinburgh University and Textile Conservation at the Courtauld Institute, London, before commencing a career in Textile Conservation at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the former Museum of Costume and Textiles, Nottingham. She continued to practice as a conservator, and undertook a survey of all the public collections of dress and textiles in the East Midlands region for East Midlands Museum Services, whilst teaching part-time at LUSAD. In 1991 she was promoted to the post of full-time lecturer, with a specialism in textile history and contemporary textile practices and she has maintained an active interest in textile studies.
Her other interests include law, and in particular, art and design and copyright issues. She undertook further postgraduate study in the School of Law at Nottingham Trent University and at the Inns of Court School of Law, London and was called to the Bar in 1995.
Her publications include contributions to The Norwich Shawl, HMSO, 1995, reviews for the Journal of Art History; and a conference paper entitled Petrarch's Apes : Originality, Plagiarism and Copyright Principles (1999) for the Media in Transition Conference, MIT, USA.
Current research interests include the Edinburgh shawl; Portraiture, entrepreneurship and patronage in 18thc Scotland; the emergence of fashion journalism; and, the Bon Ton and the cult of female celebrity in the late 18thc. She is also actively engaged on an exhibition proposal, in collaboration with Leicestershire Museums, on the theme of unstructured clothing.