Our people

Areas of expertise: social and cultural history; women and gender; dress history; fashion and textiles; material culture studies; museum studies and exhibitions; 19th–20th century Australia

Email: lorinda.cramer@acu.edu.au

Location:  ACU Melbourne Campus

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1330-8368

Lorinda Cramer is a Research Fellow in the Gender and Women’s History Research Centre in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. She is a social and cultural historian whose work explores the gendered dimensions of dress and textiles. With a professional background as a museum curator and collection manager, her research frequently incorporates material culture and a close reading of ‘things’. Lorinda is currently working on the ARC Discovery Project ‘A History of Early Modern Natural Resource Management’ led by Susan Broomhall, exploring women’s involvement in colonial agricultural production – particularly the Australian wool industry. She is also pursuing a project on wearing Australian wool, as a National Library of Australia Fellow and Powerhouse Museum Visiting Research Fellow, both for 2023, and Redmond Barry Fellow for the State Library of Victoria’s 2022 Fellowship Program. Between 2019 and 2022, Lorinda was Postdoctoral Researcher on the Australian Research Council Discovery Project ‘Men’s Dress in Twentieth-Century Australia: Masculinity, Fashion, Social Change’. Her first book, Needlework and Women’s Identity in Colonial Australia, was published by Bloomsbury in 2020. It explored how Australian women used their needles as tool for stitching together identity.

Select publications

Books

• Lorinda Cramer and Jessica Lake (eds), A Cultural History of Gender, 1750–1950 (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2024).
• Lorinda Cramer, Needlework and Women’s Identity in Colonial Australia (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).

Refereed journal articles

• Melissa Bellanta and Lorinda Cramer, ‘The comfort of things in White Australia: Male immigrants, race and the three-piece suit, c.1901–39’,Australian Historical Studies (published online 16 February 2023): DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2022.2161587.
• Melissa Bellanta and Lorinda Cramer, ‘Tropical whites: Hegemonic masculinity and menswear at the crossroads of Australia and Asia, 1900–1939’, Gender & History (published online 27 August 2022): DOI: 10.1111/1468-0424.12640.
• Lorinda Cramer and Melissa Bellanta, ‘“Clothes shall mark the man”: Wearing suits in wartime Australia, 1939–1945’, Cultural and Social History 19.1 (2022): 57–76. DOI: 10.1080/14780038.2022.2031424.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘Rethinking men’s dress through material sources: The case study of a singlet’, Australian Historical Studies 52.3 (2021): 420–442. DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2020.1772328.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘Relaxed bodies and comfortable clothes: Reframing masculinity in post-war Australia’. Gender & History 33.2 (2021): 390–407. DOI: 10.1111/1468-0424.12515.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘“Busy, without thimbles, at the needlework”: Men’s sewing and masculinity on the Victorian Goldfields, 1851–1861’, Journal of Victorian Culture 25.2 (2020): 153–170. DOI: org/10.1093/jvcult/vcz063.
• Lorinda Cramer and Andrea Witcomb, ‘“Hidden from view”?: An analysis of the integration of women’s history and women’s voices into Australia’s social history exhibitions’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 25.2 (2019): 128–142. DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2018.1475409.
• Lorinda Cramer and Andrea Witcomb, ‘Remembering and fighting for their own: Vietnam veterans and the Long Tan cross’, Australian Historical Studies 49.1 (2018): 83–102. DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2017.1394887.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘Diggers’ dress and identity on the Victorian goldfields, Australia, 1851–1870’, Fashion Theory 22.1 (2018): 85–108. DOI:10.1080/1362704X.2016.1266833.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘Making “everything they want but boots”: Clothing children in Victoria, Australia, 1840–1870’, Costume 51.2 (2017): 190–209. DOI: 10.3366/cost.2017.0024.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘Making a home in gold-rush Victoria: Plain sewing and the genteel woman’, Australian Historical Studies 48.2 (2017): 213–226. DOI:10.1080/1031461X.2017.1293705.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘Keeping up appearances: Genteel women, dress and refurbishing in gold-rush Victoria, Australia, 1851–1870’, Textile: Cloth and Culture 15.1 (2017): 48–57. DOI:10.1080/14759756.2016.1209876.

Projects

• ‘A History of Early Modern Natural Resource Management’: This ARC Discovery Project, led by Professor Susan Broomhall, analyses the management of environmental assets including water and forests. Lorinda’s involvement in the project is in the investigation of women’s role in early Australian sheep farming.
• ‘From Shoddy to Superfine: A Material History of Australian Wool’: This research, conducted as a National Library of Australia Fellow for 2023, aims to capture how consumers came to understand wearing wool through being alert to its material dimensions; by feeling superfine merino to counter inferior products.
• ‘Wearing Wool: Fashion, Fibre and Feel, 1770–1970’: This project as a 2023 Visiting Research Fellow with the Powerhouse Museum will examine wide-ranging collection items, focusing in on design, use, wear and reuse across two centuries to deepen insights into wool not as an economic commodity but rather as a worn fibre.
• ‘Wearing Wool: Foy & Gibson, Fletcher Jones and a New Dress History’: As Redmond Barry Fellow for 2022, Lorinda explores Australian wool in everyday dress practices by considering the dynamics behind how and why people chose to wear the natural fibre.
• ‘ Dress in Twentieth-Century Australia: Masculinity, Fashion, Social Change ’: This ARC Discovery Project, led by Associate Professor Melissa Bellanta, analyses how men’s dress and fashion can be mobilised to shed new light on masculinity and sexuality, class and consumption, and Indigenous and immigrant experiences of Australia across decades of social and cultural change.

Accolades and awards

• National Library of Australia Fellow 2023: National Library of Australia Fellowship Program, supported by the Stokes Family
• Visiting Research Fellow 2023: Powerhouse Museum Visiting Research Fellowship Program
• Redmond Barry Fellow 2022: State Library of Victoria Fellowships Program, supported by the University of Melbourne and State Library of Victoria.
• Shortlisted (with co-author Professor Andrea Witcomb) for the Patricia Grimshaw Prize 2020.

Public engagement

• Lorinda Cramer with Christine Layton on Afternoons, ABC Radio Perth, 10 January 2023.
• Lorinda Cramer with Jacinta Parsons, ABC Radio National, 10 January 2023.
• Lorinda Cramer with Suki Sadik on Weekend Evenings, ABC Radio National, 30 December 2022.
• Lorinda Cramer with Jacqui Baker on The Grapevine, 3RRR, 26 December 2023.
• Lorinda Cramer with Josh Becker on Breakfast, ABC Radio South East NSW, 22 December 2022.
• Lorinda Cramer with Dominique Bayens on Afternoons, ABC Radio Perth, 21 December 2022.
• Lorinda Cramer with Greg Bayliss on Breakfast, ABC Radio Canberra, 20 December 2022.
• Lorinda Cramer with Antoinette Lattouf on Mornings, ABC Radio Sydney, 19 December 2022.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘Wool swimsuits used to be standard beachwear – is it time to bring them back?’, The Conversation, 19 December 2022.
• Lorinda Cramer with Alice Walker, ABC Goulburn Murray & Victoria, 12 December 2022.
• Lorinda Cramer with Georgia Stynes on Afternoons, ABC Radio Canberra, 22 November 2022.
• Lorinda Cramer with Angela Tufvesson, ‘ Dressing down ’, Law Society Journal, 18 January 2022.
• Lorinda Cramer with Kia Handley on Drive, ABC Radio Sydney, 7 January 2022.
• Lorinda Cramer with Libbi Gore on This Weekend Life , ABC Radio Melbourne, 14 November 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with Chris Sheedy, ‘ The new look of workplace dress codes ’, In The Black, 1 July 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with Christine Leyton on Western Australia Afternoons, ABC Radio Perth, 14 May 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with Hilary Harper on Life Matters , ABC Radio National, 8 April 2021 and 27 December 2021 (summer repeat).
• Lorinda Cramer with Jacinta Parsons on Afternoons, ABC Radio Melbourne, 9 March 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with Sirine Demachkie on Weekend Evenings, ABC Radio Sydney, 19 February 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘ The politics of the necktie – “colonial” noose, masculine marker or silk status symbol? ’, The Conversation, 16 February 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with Sarah Macdonald on Evenings, ABC Radio Sydney, 11 February 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with John Stanley with Paul B Kidd on Nights , 2GB Radio, 29 January 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with Cathie Schnitzerling on Mornings, ABC Radio Brisbane,29 January 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with Russell Woolf on Breakfast, ABC Radio Perth, 29 January 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with Joelene Laverty on Breakfast, ABC Radio Darwin, 28 January 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with Robbie Buck and Wendy Harmer on Breakfast, ABC Radio Sydney, 28 January 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘ Dressed for success – as workers return to the office, men might finally shed their suits and ties ’, The Conversation, 27 January 2021.
• Lorinda Cramer with Gillian O'Shaughnessy on Afternoons, ABC Radio Perth, 7 December 2020.
• Lorinda Cramer with Andrea Gibbs on Weekends, ABC Radio Perth, 6 December 2020.
• Lorinda Cramer with Narelle Graham on Drive, ABC Radio Adeliade, 4 December 2020.
• Lorinda Cramer with Dee Dee Dunleavy on Afternoons, 3AW Radio, 4 December 2020.
• Lorinda Cramer with Cassie McCullagh on Focus, ABC Radio Sydney, 4 December 2020.
• Lorinda Cramer, ‘ Friday essay: The singlet – a short history of an Australian icon ’, The Conversation, 4 December 2020.