Research and Innovation

Our research aims to advance critical fashion thinking and practice around cutting-edge topics such as ethics, diversity, sustainability, digital innovation, supply chains, and consumption, with a focus on fashion as a force for good in society at large. Our research community includes cultural historians, designers, technologists, and social scientists. We work on conceptual and applied research, and across various methodologies including practice-based research. We consider fashion in its broadest sense, from a material or digital object, to an expanded field of cultural activity over space and time, to a context for commercial activity. Covering three broad thematic priorities with cross-cutting themes of sustainability, digital, and EDI, our researchers are primarily working on:

• Fashion Technologies
• Fashion Cultures and Narratives
• Fashion Business and Consumption

Our researchers collaborate across and outside the University both nationally and internationally, including with industry partners, charities and cultural organisations, third sector stakeholders and policymakers. We work with various external partners on innovation and knowledge exchange to ensure our research creates positive change for society, culture, the environment and the economy. Our researchers’ expertise is often called upon by the national and international press and media.

Research in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities