Doctor Alison Gill

• Biography
• Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise
• Grants / Current Projects
• Selected Publications
• Conference Presentations
• Contact Details

Biography

Alison Gill has an interdisciplinary design expertise with research activities across many media including visual communication design, products, film, mixed-media, clothing and fashion. She teaches in the Bachelor of Design (Visual Communication) and supervises design research degrees in the School of Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Australia.

Alison's PhD was titled "Wearing Clothes" (University of Sydney, 2003) and explored intersections in fashion writing, critical theory and philosophies of embodiment. Alison has written about the dynamics of design, visual and fashion cultures (analysing concepts, frameworks and/or technologies) for the journals Fashion Theory, Form/Work, and the book Fashion Studies: A Reader.

Her research interests in material culture, branding and consumption have been recently explored in two articles on athletic shoes for the anthologies Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers (2006) and Design Studies: A Reader (2009).

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Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise

Critical Design and Social Change Design; Australian Visual  Communication Design; Design Research Methodologies; Material Culture; Sociology of Consumption; Fashion Cultures and Theoretical Frameworks; Practice theory at the intersection of social and design research; Design History.

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Grants / Current Projects

On Wearing: a multidisciplinary research project with Abby Mellick Lopes about practices of use and creative extension with already made designed things.

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Selected Publications

2009 Book chapter
Gill. A. "Sneakers" Design Studies Reader ed. by D. Brody and H. Clark (London: Berg).

2007 Book chapter: re-publication
Gill, A. "Deconstruction Fashion: The Making of Unfinished, Decomposing and Re-assembled Clothes." Fashion Theory: A Reader ed. by M. Barnard (NY & London: Routledge).

2006 Book chapter
Gill, A. "Limousines for the Feet: The Rhetoric of Trainers." Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers, ed. by P McNeil and G Riello (London: Berg 2006).

2006 Refereed and published conference paper, proceedings online:
Gill, A. "Trainers: The Worlds at our feet and the multiple investments in Performance technology." Unaustralia conference, The Cultural Studies of Australasia, University of Canberra, December.

2000 Refereed Article in Australian journal:
Gill, A. "Belonging to the Swoosh." Form/Work 4 (March 2000). 93-128.

1998 Refereed Article in international journal:
Gill, A. "Deconstruction Fashion: The Making of Unfinished, Decomposing and Re-assembled Clothes." Fashion Theory 2. 1 (March 1998): 25-50

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Conference Presentations

”On Wearing: a critical interpretive framework on design’s already made” (co-written with Abby Mellick Lopes). Fashion and Dress Symposium, University of Sydney with Dept. of Gender and Cultural Studies. 15th December 2009.

Refereed Conference paper titled “On Wearing: a critical interpretive framework on design’s already made” (with Abby Mellick Lopes). AAANZ Conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 27- 28 November 2009.

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