Gail Romano

Gail is a historian and researcher working in the culture and heritage sector as Associate Curator, History at Auckland War Memorial Museum. She is particularly interested in social, cultural and economic aspects of New Zealand’s war experiences. She was an organiser of the international symposium ‘Myriad Faces of War: 1917 and its legacy’ held in Wellington in 2017, and co-editor of the subsequent publications The Myriad Legacies of 1917: A Year of War and Revolution, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018 and The Enduring Impact of the First World War: A Collection of Perspectives, Bulletin of the Auckland Museum 21, 2020. Gail often contributes to the Museum’s blog and her most recent article appeared in Context 41, Summer 2020/21, the biannual journal of the Costume and Textile Association of New Zealand. ‘The Invisible Tailor: Finding Isaac Calmanson’ highlights the story of an entrepreneurial Jewish tailor who brought his family from Leeds to Auckland following the First World War and then almost immediately disappeared from view when he changed his name.