TCF POST Desk
TORONTO — The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) has officially opened its call for proposals for the annual Veronika Gervers Research Fellowship in Textiles & Fashion History, inviting international scholars, curators, artists, and community members to dive into its world-class global collections.
Named in honor of the pioneering textiles and dress scholar Veronika Gervers—who served as a ROM curator from 1968 until her untimely passing in 1979—the fellowship aims to champion innovative research centered on the museum’s vast archive of over 40,000 global fashion items and textiles spanning centuries.
The grant offers up to $9,000 CAD to support an intensive residency and project framework, which culminates in a public presentation or educational offering. Applications for the upcoming cycle close on April 30, 2027.
Spotlight on Past Innovation: Recreating History
To understand the dynamic breadth of scholarship the fellowship inspires, one need only look at previous award recipients who have brought historical garments back to life through hands-on making and deep archival research.
2024–2025 Winner: Unlocking the Fustanella
The most recent completed fellowship project was awarded to Antonia Anagnostopoulos, a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Bard Graduate Center. Her project, The Arcadian Lass: Recreating a Fustanella and its History, focused on the traditional southeastern European male pleated garment and metal-embroidered jacket worn across the Balkans in the 19th century.
Studying historic garments housed directly within the ROM, Anagnostopoulos set out to hand-make her own authentic fustanella ensemble using traditional weaving, felting, and embroidery techniques. She then used the completed garment in a live performance—combining drag artistry with a playful reinterpretation of the traditional Greek folk song of the "Arcadian Lass," a legendary young woman who fought disguised as a male soldier in the Greek War of Independence. Her work not only honored Gervers' legacy regarding Ottoman textile influence in Eastern Europe, but also critically interrogated the gendered and nationalistic narratives tied to the garment.
2025–2026 Winner: Reviving Kavalan Banana Silk Weaving
The current fellowship term highlights indigenous cultural reclamation, awarded to the Xinshe Tribe (pateRungan) Banana Silk Weaving Group alongside a team of documentary filmmakers. The group traveled to Toronto to examine rare 19th-century Kavalan indigenous textiles and a one-of-a-kind bridal ensemble originally collected by missionary Dr. George Leslie MacKay starting in 1872.
After decades when cultural traditions were forcibly suppressed, the Xinshe community in Taiwan has spent years successfully reviving the complex art of weaving local banana-stem fibers. By studying the ROM’s holdings firsthand, the group aims to pass these vital ancestral techniques down to younger generations, captured on film by award-winning indigenous filmmakers uki bauki and Lee Yuanlong.
