Sophia T. C. Feist

I am a PhD Candidate in History supervised by Professor Ulinka Rublack and funded by the Cambridge Trust. My dissertation explores how courts in the Holy Roman Empire between 1470 and 1550 used dress to craft and enact political programmes, and looks in particular at the contributions of court tailors.

My research focusses on dress, its making, and its cultural and political meanings. I am currently examining the livery books (Hofkleiderbücher) made by the Bavarian and Electoral Saxon court tailors’ workshops in the first half of the sixteenth century. My dissertation research interrogates these and other liveries as visual ritual-political acts in the context of the fundamental structural changes which took place in the sixteenth century Holy Roman Empire.

As a trained bespoke tailor, I use my craft skills in my research and am particularly interested in experimental reconstruction as a historical methodology.

In addition to my research, I am the administrator for Cambridge's Material Culture Forum and co-convenor of the Workshop for Material Culture pre-1850. I also supervise undergraduates.

I hold an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an AB in Art & Archaeology with a certificate in Medieval Studies from Princeton University. I have previously worked as a Collections Volunteer at the Royal School of Needlework, a Curatorial Intern in European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the Noguchi Museum in New York, and also as a commercial archaeologist, research assistant, translator from German to English, and yarn dyer.