Sophie Pitman is the Pleasant Rowland Textile Specialist and research director of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection at the Center for Design and Material Culture at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A specialist in the early modern period, she now researches and teaches widely using the collection of over 13,000 historic global textiles. Her current research and curatorial projects explore the making and remaking of textiles and clothing as a research methodology, weatherproof clothing, and imitative textiles.