Tomas Brown

PhD Student

Tomas  is a doctoral student in History at the University of Cambridge, working in cooperation with the Fitzwilliam Museum via the co-supervision of Victoria Avery and Melissa Calaresu. Previous to this, he completed his MA in History of Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum / Royal College of Art in 2022, where he was awarded the Clive Wainwright Memorial Prize and selected for exchange with the Bard Graduate Center. He comes from a background in Philosophy, being awarded a BA from King's College London in 2018. He took his first steps in material culture studies via an Undergraduate Research Fellowship with the Unlocking History project. 

Tomas's research at the Museum focuses on ceramic mending practices in eighteenth-century Britain. Examining the binding, burning, lacing, and riveting present in the Glaisher Collection, he is looking to build a picture of the early material culture of domestic repair, and shed light on the traces of this history that pervade many contemporary collections of pottery and porcelain. The Glaisher bequest, together with the condition notes kept by Dr G.W.L. Glaisher, form the heart of his primary material. His project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, and he is a member of St John's College. 

Tomas's broader research interests include the place of maintenance activities in the production-consumption cycle, conservation ethics, and the intersections between the practice of historians and makers. His MA dissertation focused on the design like aspects of repair through a history of the V&A's Conservation MA. Inspired by the RCA's mix of practitioners and humanities scholars, he is looking to incorporate reconstructive methods into his PhD on the basis of his research at the Fitzwilliam.  

Outside of academia, Tomas worked as a photo archivist in private practice until 2023, and helped to coordinate the 'Open Spaces' arts and humanities programme at St George's medical school until 2022. He writes regularly for the blog Doing History in Public, and sits on the Fitzwilliam Museum Society committee. He also assists with the management of his late grandfather Gavin Scobie's sculpture.