Where Craft Meets Scholarship

Have you ever wondered how scholars decide where to publish or how a dissertation becomes a book?

Join us in celebrating the launch of Bloomsbury’s new Critical Craft Studies series – an exciting addition to a rapidly expanding field.

This event invites faculty, senior undergraduates, and graduate students to explore the publishing process and the vibrant conversations shaping craft scholarship today. Participants will have the chance to meet the editors, hear from the author of the series' first volume, and gain insider advice from editors on preparing documents for publication!

There will also be podcasts featuring conversations with the first two authors in the series, discussing Irish Lacemaking and Queer Crafts, starting at 1pm!

Come discover how craft thinking is shaping scholarship and join us in toasting the beginning of this important new series.

How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca  

Susan Surette

Susan Surette PhD, is a part-time lecturer in all things craft related within the Department of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal and an artist who has worked in ceramics and textiles. Her research focus is on Canadian studio ceramic and textile histories informed by the politics of gender, labour, and cultural identities that are embedded within aesthetic vocabularies, material practices and dissemination of craft objects and discourse. She is a co-editor of Bloomsbury’s Critical Craft Studies Series launching in 2025. 

Elaine Cheasley Paterson

Elaine Cheasley Paterson, PhD, is Professor of Craft Studies in the Department of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Her research focuses on education, settlement, migration and social benevolence (through the early-20th-century migration of craft practices) in Britain and Canada. She is co-editor of the Critical Craft Studies Series launching in 2025.

Molly-Claire Gillett

Molly-Claire Gillett is a Postdoctoral Fellow co-located at the University of Galway, Ireland and Trent University, Canada. She works at the intersection of making, place and pedagogy, researching craft in Irish and Canadian rural women’s organizations. Dr. Gillett is the author of Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice (2025), the first book in the Critical Craft Studies Series with Bloomsbury Academic.

Dr. Daniel Fountain 

Dr. Daniel Fountain is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter, UK. They are a practitioner, curator, and scholar whose work explores the intersections between LGBTQ+ art, craft, and visual culture. Fountain is the editor of Crafted with Pride: Queer Craft and Activism in Contemporary Britain (2023) and the author of Queer Crafts: Material Practices and the Making of Identity (forthcoming 2026), in the Critical Craft Studies Series with Bloomsbury Academic.

Suzie Nash

Suzie Nash, Commissioning Editor, Design and Craft, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, Bloomsbury Academic Press.