Lisa Bower is a museum curator and historian who specializes in material culture studies about Nova Scotian samplers, needlework and 19th century African Nova Scotian schools. Although she works with a range of material culture types and periods Lisa is particularly interested in recouping and preserving the identities of 19th century sampler makers and others who mark stories through thread. Lisa started working at the NSM in 2006 and began working with the cultural history collection composed of over 85,000+ objects across multiple museums since 2013. She holds an M.A. in History from Dalhousie University (2022), where she received the Bowes Prize in History (2021), a B.A. in Anthropology from Saint Mary’s University (1990), and a Collections Management certificate from the University of Victoria (2018). She curated: “Inspired Threads” (Curator) (MNH, 2023/MOI 2024), and “By Her Hand” (Co-curator) (MNH/2023). Lisa’s interest in the decorative arts began at an early age with her grandparents passing along their shared pride and love of antiques. Lisa’s interest in historic needlework derives from her own experience as a life-long stitcher and embroiderer. She has delivered lectures about her research on the Rachel Barrett School sampler (NSM 2018.14.1) to Dalhousie’s Atlantic Canada Material Culture Conference (2025), the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society (2023), and as part of academic lecture series 19th Century Dress and Textiles Reframed (2023) and OrnamentalEmbroidery.com (2021).