Dr Bethan Bide
Lecturer in Fashion History

Profile

Biography

Bethan Bide has an interdisciplinary academic background that encompasses cultural geography, design history and English literature. She is a Lecturer in Fashion History and the Director of the Pasold Research Fund, a charitable organisation that supports the study of textile and dress history. After completing an AHRC CDA funded PhD with the Museum of London in 2017, which explored the rebuilding of London as a fashion city after the Second World War, she was Lecturer in Design and Cultural Theory at the University of Leeds. Prior to her academic career Bethan worked as a producer and production co-ordinator, making comedy programs for BBC Radio and comedy theatre tours.

Bethan works primarily on the cultural, social, and business histories of fashion. Her research focuses on material objects and explores how these can reveal historic relationships between production and consumption, the development of fashion cities and the relationship between materiality, memory, and fashion as biography. She is also interested in the ways that fashion history can illuminate contemporary issues of fashion sustainability, something she explored as part of the AHRC funded project 'Cottons Hidden Voices: Stories from the makers of your clothes'.

Bethan has collaborated extensively with museum curators and heritage organisations to produce exhibitions and public and educational content. Most recently this has included work with the National Trust and English Heritage, and contributions to the 2023 ‘Cotton Connections’ exhibition at Lotherton Hall and ‘Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners shaped global style’ at the Museum of London (October 2023–July 2024).

Bethan serves as the Employability and Careers Officer and Disability Officer for History of Art.

Departmental roles

Employability and Careers Officer 
Disability Officer

Research

Overview

Publications

Selected publications

York Research Database 

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Curating the Dressed Body
• Fashion, Sustainability and Ethics
• Discovering the Humanities
• Real World Humanities

Postgraduate

• Making Fashion

External activities

Overview

Bethan is the Director of the Pasold Research Fund, a charity that promotes and supports research on textile history.