Superfan Iona helps bring Swifties closer to their idol at the V&A
Huddersfield English literature lecturer Dr Iona Murphy recently shared her passion for Taylor Swift when she was one of four successful Swiftie applicants to the Taylor Swift Superfan Advisor role advertised by the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Iona answered a call from the V&A for Swifties to help them advise on Swiftie fandom and the Eras Tour in the UK. She became one of just four whittled down from over a thousand applicants, after colleagues at the university told her that she would be the ideal person to lend the V&A her expertise.
As well as being a fan, Iona sees links between the singer’s lyrics and some of the writers that she discusses with students in her role at the university, but helping the V&A tapped into her admiration for Taylor’s talents as a writer and performer.
Iona helped towards the unveiling of the Taylor Swift | Songbook Trail at the V&A, which can be seen until 8 September. The trail places costumes and items from the singer for visitors to see throughout the galleries of the famous museum in South Kensington.
"It's just been incredible," says Iona, who showed fans around the Taylor Swift | Songbook Trail at the V&A’s recent preview night. "I just never imagined that I would actually get the job, it was one of those things you apply for thinking 'that would be my dream job' because everyone listens to me talk about Taylor Swift all the time for free. It was an absolute dream come true.
Parallels with some of Iona's favourite writers
"There was an advert from the V&A, which ended up on BBC News and a lot of other news sites. Quite a few people sent it to me, various colleagues said ‘this is perfect for you’ and some of my friends were sending it telling me 'you've got to go for it'.
"The application process was actually really fun, as it was quite creative. I had to pick three items from the V&A and write a little bit about how they could be related to Taylor Swift. That kind of analysis is right up my street as someone who does English literature.
“I picked this piece of fabric that was a homage to the poet Emily Dickinson. I wrote about the parallels between Emily Dickinson as a writer and Taylor Swift, and since then it has been revealed that they are sixth cousins - so there is there is a kind of very, very loose relation there.
“I waited five weeks before I could tell anybody, and it was so hard because I had told some people about the interview and they were asking, have you heard anything yet? I had, but I had to tell them I was waiting to hear when in fact I knew I'd got it!”
Speaking on the Taylor Swift | Songbook Trail, Iona said: “As an example, her love story dress from Fearless was proposed for a gallery that contains Raphael paintings, which I love. Seeing that dress in there is one of my favourite parts of the trail, and seeing it go there was one of the more surreal parts of this process.”
Improving engagement with museums
Iona’s PhD indulged one of her other passions with a study of Sylvia Plath which saw her work closely with Heather Clark, the university’s former professor of contemporary poetry and author of Red Comet, the acclaimed 2021 biography of Plath. The trail has also sparked more questions on how to engage young people with culture in a less static and more interactive way, with Iona having delivered a lecture at the V&A on 3rd August.
“This trail is about accessibility as well, people do not have to pay to see it - a lot of people didn't get tickets for the tour. It's nice to be able to engage with The Eras Tour on some level in a way that's not going to cost anything, and it's to do with engaging younger people in museums. A study has suggested that there is a drop-off in interest in the 10-15 age group, and with the trail the V&A can point them to the other fun stuff as well as connecting with Taylor Swift.
“I hope it prompts people to start to think about lyrics as poetry, that this can help make poetry itself far more accessible. That is something that Taylor Swift does really well for a much wider audience. If you have lyrics that are accessible enough to be analysed by the general public then it actually helps get people into literature and poetry. That's one of the things that I love about Taylor's music as well.”