Teleica Kirkland

Biography

Teleica Kirkland is a Lecturer in the Cultural and Historical Studies Department at London College of Fashion where she is a unit leader on various first, second and third year units.

Teleica is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths University where her thesis, Sartorial Respectability: Post War Caribbean Dress, looks at how Caribbean women of African heritage during the Windrush era (1948 - 1971) adopted respectability politics through clothing and behaviour as a survival strategy to mitigate against negative perceptions of their race and class.

Teleica is also the founder and Creative Director of the Costume Institute of the African Diaspora (CIAD); an organisation dedicated to developing resources and building curricula about dress and adornment cultures from the African Diaspora. CIAD currently runs a biennial dress conference which brings together researchers from the African Diaspora to share their research on a particular theme.

The combination of Teleica's PhD and her organisational research encompasses her interests in African Diaspora dress practices; how they have developed and been expressed within environments informed by the colonial project and the intersections between diverse material cultures. Drawing upon Kimberle Crenshaw's work on intersectionality and Homi K Bhabha's work on hybridisation Teleica explores the idea of the creation of the self through as a type of bricolage of different cultural customs and practices.


CURATED PROJECTS

Sa Lapo Ki Nou Ladan (The Skin We’re In): Explorations into Skin Politics (2024) CIAD's third biennial dress conference, University of the Arts London: London College of Fashion.

Fibres Threads and Fabrics: Textiles and Cloth as Material Culture (2022) CIAD's second biennial International dress conference, University of the Arts London: London College of Fashion.

Si Wi Yah: Sartorial Representations of the African Diaspora (2018), CIAD’s inaugural biennial international dress conference, University of the Arts London: London College of Fashion.

Tartan: Its Journey through the African Diaspora (2014), interactive site-based project across various sites, Clerkenwell Craft Central, Black Cultural Archives, Victoria & Albert Museum.





PUBLICATIONS

Kirkland, T. (2024) Chapter 8, Callaloo People in Africa's Fashion Diaspora: Yale Univerity Press, London.

Kirkland, T. (2023) Methodologies for the Creolization of Fashion Studies, Fashion Studies Journal Special Issue: State of the Field, Issue 1, Article 3.

Kirkland, T. (2022) 'Tartan: Its Journey Through the African Diaspora' in Scotland's Transnational Heritage: Legacies of Empire and Slavery (eds Emma Bond and Michael Morris) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 23-37.

Kirkland, T. (2021) ‘Textiles from Trees and Trash’, Surface Design Journal, The Solidarity Issue, Volume 45, number 4, Winter 2021, pp 54 -57 (4) Surface Design Association.

Kirkland, T. (2021) ‘Reflections of Durbar in the Diaspora’, Critical Studies in Men's Fashion, Volume 8, Numbers 1-2, 1 October 2021, pp. 127-140 (14) Intellect.

Kirkland, T. (2021) ‘To Just Be’ in Still Breathing, 100 Black Voices on Racism, (eds Suzette Llewellyn and Suzanne Packer) London: HarperCollins, pp 138-139.

Kirkland, T. (2018) 'Clothing As Resistance' in HARSAR I:Object (ed Thomas Presto) Oslo: Tabanka African and Caribbean Peoples Dance Ensemble, pp. 41-42.

Kirkland, T. (2012), ‘Cultural Dress and Costume History of the Caribbean’ Churchill Fellow Report, Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, PDF online.



LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

Kirkland, Teleica (2024) Tartan Migration and Global Diaspora, Tartan: Exploding the Grid. V&A Dundee, 12 January 2024.

Kirkland, Teleica (2022) Cultural Proximity and Critical Distance, (as part of the panel with Sameerah Balogun and Ranji Mangcu hosted by Kiara Morris and Tegan Rush) FACE Summit 14 October 2022.

Kirkland, Teleica (2021) 'Tartan's Journey Through the African Diaspora: British Imperialism Through Fabric' (hosted panel and presented paper as part of the panel with Elli Young and Cheney McKnight). Conversations in Creativity for the British Textile Biennial, organised by A. Butchart and Creative Lancashire, 27 October 2021.

Kirkland, Teleica (2021) The Hat and The Kilt: Dress Politics and Power as part of a panel presentation on the Samson Kambalu exhibition 15th June 2021, Modern Art Oxford.

Kirkland, Teleica (2021) Aesthetics and Personhood of the Black Body In: What is Radical about Cultural Studies Now? Fashion, Culture and Politics in the Age of the Anthropocene, 11 - 12 June 2021, London College of Fashion.

Kirkland, Teleica (2020) The Ivory Bangle Lady, guest appearance on Not What You Thought You Knew season 2, episode 8, presented by Fern Ridell, 13 October 2020, Sky History Channel.

Kirkland, Teleica (2019) Diaspora Dress Cultures as part of the Sustainability panel at Africa Fashion Week, 10 August 2019, Freemasons Hall.

Kirkland, Teleica (2019) African Diaspora Fashion History as part a panel for the Global Fashion Workshop, organised by T. Cencik, Fashion Roundtable 10 May 2019, Victoria and Albert Museum.