Meg Kobza

Dr Meghan Kobza is a historian of leisure culture, costume, and commercialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her forthcoming book, Masquerade: Unmasking Georgian London, brings this vibrant cultural phenomenon to life through the varied and colourful experiences of people, places, and material objects that were crucial in establishing this historic entertainment within the elite Georgian social calendar and public imaginations of the past and present.

Meg currently holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Newcastle University where she completed her PhD in 2020. This postdoctoral project explores the interconnections between display, performance, and consumer culture and how making, selling, and/or wearing leisure costume impacted cultural perceptions of race and gender within the British Empire. This research will produce a second book that examines the role of amateur performance, play, and dress in enforcing and challenging racial hierarchies of the long nineteenth century.

As an extension of this work, Meg is collaborating with the National Trust to bring an accessible and experiential history of Georgian fancy dress to the Bath Assembly Rooms. This will lay the groundwork for creating new types of multi-sensory visitor engagement that can be applied to other heritage sites, bringing Georgian sociability to life in tangible, smellable, and audible forms.