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:
- 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