Dr Suchitra Choudhury (she/her) is an Affiliate Researcher with the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow. Following a PhD in English literature, she has published widely on the cultural history of Kashmiri and Paisley shawls in venues including Textile History, Victorian Literature and Culture, and The Indian Economic and Social History Review (IESHR). Her award-winning monograph Textile Orientalisms: Cashmere and Paisley Shawls in British Literature and Culture was published by Ohio University Press in 2023. It is the first major study of oriental shawls in literature and shows how they came to represent both high fashion and the British empire in the extended nineteenth century.
Suchitra curated a physical ‘Cabinet of Curiosity: Paisley shawls’ at the Archives and Special Collections at University of Glasgow (2023). She has served on advisory boards of the Victoria and Albert Museum (Dundee), Paisley Museum, and the Journal of Dress History. Suchitra’s research has been supported by the Paul Mellon Centre and Design History Society, and she has been invited to contribute to the decolonising project at V&A Dundee (2021) and recently, at Tate Britain’s exhibition Sargent and Fashion (2024). Her wider interest approaches the representation of Indian objects in British museums.
