DR RICARDA BIGOLIN
Associate Professor Ricarda Bigolin is a practice-based researcher and educator and the Associate Dean of Fashion and Textiles Design at RMIT University. Her research explores critical tactics and interventions to challenge how fashion is produced, used and consumed. This extends to practice, arts-based and material methods, critical tactics of wearing and performing to reveal relationships between fashion, value and use. Current research investigates alternate historical clothing practices in Australia offering insight into material circularity and prolonging product use. Her research has won international awards and prizes and Ricarda maintains ongoing teaching and research collaborations with education and industry partners worldwide.
BENJAMIN NORSWORTHY
Benjamin Norsworthy has worked across social and environmental sustainability topics for almost fifteen years. He has extensive experience in the fashion industry, having worked for Burberry’s in-house responsibility team with a focus on responsible materials sourcing and circularity. Benjamin was also public affairs lead at the Global Fashion Agenda and worked on the 2019 edition of the Copenhagen Fashion Summit. He has advised the Amsterdam Fashion Academy on sustainability curriculum design, and has guest lectured on sustainable fashion at Oxford Brookes and Buckinghamshire New University. Benjamin is currently co-founder and chief sustainability officer at Bendi, a sustainability-tech start-up building supply chain traceability and risk solutions for fashion and textile companies.
DR CHRISTIAN THOMPSON AO
Dr Christian Thompson AO is a Bidjara man of the Kunja Nation with Irish and Chinese heritage. His practice spans across video, photography, sculpture, textiles, performance and sound, evolving through a process of auto – ethnography. While employing various modes of research, he connects his own experience to larger social, political, cultural meanings and understandings. Thompson grew up in rural and urban environments in the 1980s and 90s and he interweaves references to his Bidjara culture throughout his multidisciplinary practice to address issues of colonialism, identity and cultural representation. His doctoral research and art practice has had a critical impact on International and Australian art. In 2018 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished services to the visual arts and as a role model to young indigenous artists in the Queen’s Birthday honours list.
