Dr Holly Marsden

Position: Assistant Research Curator

About

Holly is an assistant curator of Kensington Palace, who focuses on the research and development of the reinterpretation of the Queen’s State Apartments. She completed her PhD in 2024 under a collaboration between HRP and the University of Winchester, and her thesis examined the personal and public identities of Queen Mary II.

During her PhD, Holly worked on the exhibitions 'Crown to Couture' at Kensington Palace and 'Inspiring People' at the National Portrait Gallery. Her research interests include the art, architectural, and material culture of the seventeenth century, especially Anglo-Dutch cultural exchange and relationships, and global female rulership, specialising in early modern queenship.

Holly’s work also explores the histories of women loving women and LGBTQ+ history more broadly, having studied Queer History for her master’s degree at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Select publications

Marsden, H., ‘A global “Pattern to Woman-kind”? Queen Mary II on commemorative ceramics in England, the United Provinces, China, and Colonial America’, The English Ceramic Circle Transactions (forthcoming).

Marsden, H., ‘Queerness at Court’, Crown to Couture: The Magazine (2023) pp. 106-109. Beerens, R. J., Delbe, M and Marsden, H., ‘Dutch Art of the Golden Age Abroad’, Kunstchronik 76 (2023), pp. 106-108.

Marsden, H., ‘Vice and Virtue in London’s Gin Craze: Social Justice and Alcoholic Consumption in the Eighteenth Century,’ Alfred 10 (2021), pp. 159- 169.