Magali An Berthon
Assistant Professor in Fashion Studies
- Department: Communication, Media and Culture
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Professor Berthon is a French-Vietnamese textile and dress historian focusing on the modern and contemporary history of Southeast Asian dress and textiles, with a specific interest in the intimate politics of dress and silk textile crafts in Cambodia.
From January 2022 to July 2024, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral research fellow attached to the Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen. Her research project TEX-KR explored the surviving textile practices, production, and heritage during and after the Khmer Rouge regime, relying on the study of clothing, textiles, and archives at the National Museum of Cambodia and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia.
She currently continues to explore Cambodian dress and textiles practices in conflict and post-conflict times.
With experience in textile design, exhibition curation, and documentary filmmaking, she earned a PhD in History of Design from the Royal College of Art of London with her thesis titled ‘Silk and Post-Conflict Cambodia: Embodied Practices and Global and Local Dynamics of Heritage and Knowledge Transference (1991–2018)’ in 2021.
Research areas and areas of expertise:
- global fashion and textile history
- politics of dress
- Cambodian modern history
- materialities of conflict
- crafts & making processes
- sustainable fashion
- decolonial praxis
Education/Degrees
- 2016 – 2021 ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART - LONDON, UK
PhD in History of Design / Arts and Humanities Department
Dissertation: Silk and Post-Conflict Cambodia: Embodied Practices and Global and Local Dynamics of Heritage and Knowledge Transference (1990s-2010s)
Thesis defended on March 12, 2021
Examiners: Fiona KERLOGUE (SOAS) and Katherine BRICKELL (Royal Holloway)
Thesis advisors: Sarah CHEANG (main advisor) and Martina MARGETTS (second advisor) (RCA)
- 2014 - 2015 FASHION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY – NEW YORK, NY
One year of MA Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, and Museum Practice
on a Fulbright fellowship
- 2004 - 2006 ENSAD NATIONAL SCHOOL OF DECORATIVE ARTS – PARIS, FRANCE
MFA – Textile Design with Honors
- 2002 - 2004 ENSAAMA SCHOOL OF APPLIED ARTS – PARIS, FRANCE
BA – Graphic Design and Visual Communication
Publications
Edited volume:
(2025). Co-edited with Hana Al-Banna Chidiac and Musée du quai Branly, Au fil de l’or : L’art de se vêtir de l’orient au soleil levant (Golden Thread: The Art of Dressing from North Africa to the Far East): Exhibition catalogue. Paris : Musée du quai Branly and Skira.
Peer-reviewed journal articles:
(2023). “What to Make out of Loss: Exploring the Missing Textile Collection of the National Museum of Cambodia,” Special Issue Design and Transience, Res Mobilis. Oviedo University Press. ISSN: 2255-2957, Vol. 13, nº. 16, pp.4-22.
(2023). “Exhibition Review: Remembering S-21 Victims through their Clothes,” Fashion Studies vol. 4, no. 2, 2023, pp. 1-11.
(2023). "TEX-KR Project: From Textile Remains to Lost Practices, Investigating the Textile Material Culture of Conflict of the Khmer Rouge Regime", Archaeological Textile Review, No.64, January 2023 issue, 142-146.
(2019). “Artisans Angkor: Reclaiming Cambodian Silk Crafts under French Patronage (1992-2017),” Journal of Textile Design and Research Practice vol.7 (1), May 2019, pp. 78-103.
Journal articles:
(2023). “Den tekstilmaterielle kulturkonflikt i Cambodia”, trans. Morten Grymer-Hansen and Mathilde Sonne, pp.4-5, TENEN - the Danish Society for Textile History, 33m Årgang NR.2, Juni 2023.
(2023). “Dinh Q Lê, Photographing the Thread of Memory,” Textile: Cloth and Culture [online], 15 March 2023, pp. 1-6. DOI: 10.1080/14759756.2023.2171832
(2018). “Textile Remains at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum,” Mémoires en Jeu n.6, May 2018, pp. 85-90.
(2016). Articles “Authenticity,” “Appropriation,” “Arjun Appadurai,” “Guillaume Apollinaire,” “Fashion-led design,” “Quilting,” “Recyclability,” “Upcycling,” and “Wearable technologies,” Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design Vol.1-2-3 online, ed. Clive Edwards.
Peer-reviewed book chapters in edited volumes:
[Forthcoming 2026] “Khmer golden silk: Indigeneity, Nationhood, and International Competition” in Volume 1 of the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of World Textiles, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
(2025). “Histoire de l’or dans les textiles du Cambodge” in Au fil de l’or : L’art de se vêtir de l’orient au soleil levant (Golden Thread: The art of dressing from north Africa to the far east) exhibition catalogue. eds. Hanna Al-Banna Chidiac, Magali An Berthon and Musee du quai Branly. Paris: Musee du quai Branly and Skira.
(2024). “Beyond Traditions: Rethinking Textile Crafts and Heritage,” The Common Thread: Collected Essays in Honour of Eva Andersson Strand, eds. Marie-Louise Nosch, Anne Drewsen and Ulla Mannering. Turnhout: Brepols.
(2024). “Narrative and Material Tools of Resistance: Mobilizing Textile Crafts, Heritage, and Fashion in the Context of the Invasion of Ukraine (2022–2023)”
Co-authored with Marie Louise Nosch, Sophia Hayda, Tetiana Krupaa and Yuliia Lazorenko, EuroWeb Anthology, eds. Kerstin Dross-Krüpe, Louise Quillien, and Kalliope Sarri. Lincoln: Zea E-Books, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
(2024). "Silk Weaving in the Cambodian Refugee Crisis and Diaspora: Displaced Practice and Identities in the Post-Khmer Rouge Era" in Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries: Stories from a Globe-Spanning History, edited by Nazanin Hedayat Munroe. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
(2024). "Threads of Evidence: Textile Remains at TSGM", Co-authored with Julia Brennan, in Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: A Multifaceted History of Khmer Rouge Crimes, eds. Stephanie Benzaquen Gautier and Anne-Laure Porée. Leiden: Brill.
(2024). "Investigating Female Entrepreneurship in Silk Weaving in Contemporary Cambodia" In Threads of Globalization, edited by Melia Belli. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Other publications:
(2022). Crafts in Asia: Pathways to Sustainability, Creative Resource Guide series [ebook]. Singapore: ASEF Foundation.
(2020). “Afrique : Terre d’abondance textile,” Mode et vêtement. Études visuelles et culture matérielle, eds. Philippe Sénéchal and Damien Delille, 430-38. Paris, INHA/MAD.
(2019). Crafting Laos and Cambodia, Creative Resource Guide series [ebook], Singapore: ASEF Foundation.