Marie Riegels Melchior

Marie Riegels Melchior serves as Associate Professor in European Ethnology at the SAXO Institute, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, where she has held academic positions since 2009 including her current role since 2017. Her work bridges academic research with museum practice, focusing on Danish cultural expression through material artifacts.

Education:

• Cand. mag. in European Ethnology, University of Copenhagen (1997-2001)
• PhD candidate, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts/School of Design & Designmuseum Danmark (2004-2008)
• Visiting Research Fellow, University of Leicester (2011)
• Visiting Scholar, University College London (2005) and Columbia University (1999)

Her research centers on the cultural history of fashion and design, examining how wardrobes function as repositories of personal and collective memory. Current projects investigate the Dranella fashion company (1956-2000) and sustainable principles in royal dress collections, revealing fashion's role in negotiating identity, class, and environmental responsibility. She pioneers interdisciplinary approaches connecting material culture studies with contemporary sustainability challenges.

Recent publications demonstrate consistent thematic focus on Nordic fashion contexts, with increasing attention to gender construction, Arctic adaptations, and heritage sustainability. Her scholarship moves beyond descriptive history to analyze fashion as active social practice, frequently incorporating museum studies frameworks and Scandinavian case studies that challenge Eurocentric fashion narratives.

Scientific Awards:

• Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademi for Svensk Folkekultur (2021)

Professor Riegels Melchior actively supervises PhD candidates through the SAXO Institute's doctoral program, though specific advisees aren't publicly listed. Her research has been supported by prestigious fellowships including the Polaire Weissman Fund at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2001-2002) and multiple research appointments at Designmuseum Danmark, reflecting strong museum-academia partnerships.

She operates within the SAXO Institute's collaborative environment encompassing archaeology, ethnology, history, and classical studies, maintaining particularly close ties with Danish fashion archives and museums including Designmuseum Danmark and the National Museum of Denmark's dress collections.