Research Collective for Decoloniality & Fashion

Course description

This seven-week online introductory course on decoloniality & fashion explores both conceptual and practice-based aspects of decoloniality and fashion and presents participants with an exciting collaborative opportunity—through its discursive and participatory format—to examine a range of tools, formats and practices that will strengthen their position to disrupt dominant eurocentric fashion and formulate diverse, ethical and culturally sustainable alternatives.

We welcome participants from all walks of life, with or without a background in fashion—students, researchers, educators, curators, fashion practitioners, critical thinkers, and activists committed to undoing contemporary fashion’s violence and erasure.

The focus is on knowledge transmission; we aim to learn from and with each other. he course is convened by some of the most exciting decolonial and fashion thinkers: Angela Janssen (Belgium), Sandra Niessen (The Netherlands), Tanveer Ahmed (England)Siviwe James (South Africa), Carol Barreto (Brazil), Pierre-Antoine Vettorello (Belgium), and is coordinated by Mi Medrado.

The classes are every Tuesday evening, 8-9:30 pm (GMT+2), the Netherlands time, in English and consist of 1h30 hours, including a lecture-type presentation, assignments in smaller breakout rooms sessions, and group discussions.

The course is organized around seven topics, and it examines some key problems of the contemporary fashion industry and their roots in the modern civilization project. It explores obscured intersectional forms of discrimination, erasure, and exploitation within contemporary fashion perpetuated in sustainability discourses, fashion curricula, and curation practices. Offering many decolonial alternatives that work towards a politics of redress, a politics of aesthetic and epistemic restitution and repair, and a politics of giving back a place in the present, of hosting and emplacing what has been denied and erased.

Course details

• Course details
• September 23 to November 4, 2025
• 7 online sessions via ZOOM | Sep 23 and 30, Oct 7, 14, 21, 28, November 4
• Once a week
• on Tuesday evenings at 8-9:30 pm (GMT+2), the Netherlands time
• Course fee: 275€ (plus 8,46 registration fee)
• Payment on Eventbrite | https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/online-introductory-course-on-decoloniality-and-fashion-2025-tickets-1369107269699?aff=oddtdtcreator
• Enrollment via https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XZIYQnSv7Wte5s3u6ke-iajaBPDL1yhDv6xjNiB8umk/edit

Course Outline

1: Tuesday | Sep 23 2025 | Introduction | Mi Medrado (Brazil)

Title: Fashion Research on Decoloniality

2: Tuesday | Sep 30 2025 | Decoloniality and fashion | Angela Janssen (Belgium)

Title: Decoloniality and fashion

3: Tuesday | Oct 7 2025 | Decoloniality and sustainable fashion | Sandra Niessen (The Netherlands)

Title: What does (de)coloniality have to do with fashion sustainability?

4: Tuesday | Oct 14 2025 | Decoloniality and fashion education | Tanveer Ahmed (England)

Title: The End of Fashion Curricula

5: Tuesday | Oct 21 2025 | Decoloniality and fashion restitution| Siviwe James (South Africa)

Title: Listening as Return: Sonic Labels for Fashion, Memory & Method

6: Tuesday | Oct 28 2025 | Decoloniality and Fashion Activism | Carol Barreto (Brazil)

Title: ModAtivismo

7: Tuesday | Nov 4 2025 | Decoloniality and Fashion and Politics of Redress | Pierre-Antoine Vettorello (Belgium)

Title: Using Diasporic Histories to Disrupt Eurocentric Fashion Museums