Professor of the History of Design and Material Culture, UCA Doctoral College

Victoria Kelley is a research professor in UCA’s Doctoral College, where she supervises PhD students and supports PGR research methods and supervisor development.  

Victoria’s research encompasses a range of subjects grouped under the heading ‘relationships between people and things’. Her 2010 book, Soap and Water: cleanliness, dirt and the working classes in Victorian and Edwardian Britain is a study of how material culture is formed in practice by ideologies and values: it examines the complex meanings of clean and dirty bodies, clothes, and homes. Her latest book is Cheap Street: London’s street markets and the cultures of informality, c.1850 – 1939. Street markets are an overlooked site of urban modernity and the most vigorous outgrowth of the informal economy that flourishes below and beyond the recognised institutions of the consumer city. This research has resulted in a new interpretation of London’s urban geographies, moving beyond the accepted view of the West End as the consumer city and the East as the city of poverty, and demonstrating that the informality of the street markets has been a powerful force in shaping representations of London and its people.  

https://www.uca.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/victoria-kelley/

 

Back to conference details