Peter McNeil

Biography

Distinguished Professor Peter McNeil FAHA is a leading international scholar in the fields of design history, fashion studies and material culture, developing inter-disciplinary approaches to the global circulation of imagery and ideas, with a focus on understudied women’s and queer voices. He works across English, French and Australian topics from the 18th century to the present day. He is descended from English, Irish, Scottish, Bavarian and Austrian convicts, political dissidents, free settlers and supporters of Australia’s Federation. He lives and works on Gadigal, Dharug and Gundungurra country. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH); previous Section Head for ‘The Arts’; Past President, AAANZ representing Art History in this region. Co-Editor with Dr Valerie Steele of ‘Fashion Theory’, he is interim Section Head for ‘The Arts’, AAH.

For a decade he was Professor of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University where he worked to establish the dignity of the topic in the European university system. He was the first design academic to be awarded the most prestigious academic grant in Finand, the FiDiPro/Academy of Finland Distinguished Professorship, Aalto (2014-18) for the study of performance costume within a film and television school. He maintained a strong focus on the local, working with Bathurst Regional Art Gallery on an award-winning photomedia exhibition (2017), with Hamilton Gallery (Victoria), and producing histories of creativity in Paddington, Surry Hills and Darlinghurst (Sydney). He is the Australian representative for a major global art exhibition ‘The First Homosexuals’ (Chicago, 2025) and he supports the new online Australian queer art history collective, Kink.