项目/合作

Tommy Tse contributed "Sensing Authenticity: The Life of Fashion in Kenya" to Enclothed Knowledges, an international group exhibition of practice-based fashion research curated by Ellen Sampson and Ben Barry. Drawing on CAFP’s ethnographic research in Nairobi and featuring photography by Paul Cox, the work explored how creativity, authenticity, and value are understood through the sensory and material life of clothing in Kenyan fashion markets. The exhibition brought together photography, garments, film, installation, reconstruction, and performance to demonstrate how practice-based methodologies can expand fashion research and generate new forms of knowledge. Click here to learn more: https://enclothedknowledges.com/

During the 2025–26 academic year, CAFP Principal Investigator Tommy Tse held visiting appointments at two leading research institutions in the United States. He was an Academic Visiting Fellow at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and a Visiting Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism during spring 2026. Alongside these appointments, he presented CAFP research at institutions across the United States, including the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Parsons School of Design at The New School. His talks explored China–Africa fashion networks, cultural mediation, authenticity, and the production and circulation of value across global fashion economies.

China Africa Fashion Power participated in the KU Leuven workshop “What’s Aesthetics Got to Do with It? Cultures of Care, Style, and Struggle” (10–11 December 2025), an interdisciplinary forum exploring aesthetics as a site of negotiation, labour, and cultural meaning, co-organized by Prof. Giselinde Kuipers, Prof. Jeroen de Kloet, Dr. Leonie Schmidt, and Dr. Tommy Tse. The cross-ERC team workshop featured presentations included Dr. Ke Ma on African women mediating China–Africa fashion value chains, Dr. Johanna von Pezold on branded aesthetics, Fairuzah Atchulo on localised creativity among Kenyan fashion consumers, and Dr. Jupiter Wang on aspirational labour within SHEIN’s trend economy. These conversations offered valuable perspectives on fashion, value, and creative labour across transnational contexts. The workshop also featured a session by Dr. Tommy Tse on academic and professional pathways, which reflected on the broader critical discussions on the myths and struggles of finding an academic job.

On November 20, Dr. Wei Wang and Dr. Johanna von Pezold presented their research at the CEDITRAA workshop, "Fitting In – Standing Out: Cultural Entrepreneurship and Optimal Distinctiveness in Africa and Asia," at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. The workshop explored how creative entrepreneurs across film, music, dance, and fashion in Africa and Asia navigate the balance between fitting in and standing out in competitive creative markets. Dr. Wang presented "Platformized Optimal Distinctiveness: Aspirational Labor Amid Trends, Law, and Exploitation in SHEIN" and Dr. von Pezold presented "Beyond Fitting In or Standing Out: Mediating Chinese Fashion in Mozambique."

For our final ASCA Global Africa seminar of the semester, Histories & Materialities of Second-Hand Clothes (SHC), Mwangi Mwaura (Oxford) and Jiaying Tu (UvA) took us from Nairobi’s Gikomba market to Guangdong’s sorting warehouses — tracing how second-hand clothes move, acquire value, and shape everyday economies.

CAFP was delighted to host the book launch for the second edition of Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists on 14 November 2025. Editors Agnès Rocamora (London College of Fashion) and Anneke Smelik (Radboud University) opened the event with an overview of the volume’s expanded contributions and its continued significance for understanding the relationship between fashion, culture, and theory. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Tommy Tse (UvA) and brought together an interdisciplinary panel featuring Dr. Roberto Filippello (UvA), Dr. Diego Semerene (UvA), and Prof. Jane Tynan (VU Amsterdam). Their conversation engaged the audience in wide-ranging reflections on methodology, theoretical frameworks, and the future of fashion studies. We thank all speakers, panelists, and attendees, both in person and online, for contributing to a stimulating and memorable event.

CAFP was delighted to present the hybrid guest lecture “Retheorising Creativity and Authenticity of Fashion in Kenya” with the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) on 13 November 2025. Dr. Tommy Tse (University of Amsterdam) shared insights from over two years of ethnographic research in Nairobi and China, examining how fakes, originals, and copies intersect to produce new meanings of value, creativity, and style in Kenya’s vibrant fashion markets. The lecture traced how traders, consumers, and resellers navigate layered systems of authenticity—not as fixed binaries, but as relational, material, and sensory negotiations grounded in everyday practice. Through encounters in places such as Gikomba and Toi Market, Dr. Tse challenged Western assumptions about originality and re-centred non-Western experiences in global fashion theory. The Q&A was moderated by Dr Wei Wang (UvA) and PhD researcher Fairuzah Atchulo (UvA). We thank all speakers, collaborators, and attendees—both online and in person—for contributing to an engaging and thought-provoking event. You can view the full lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bpb_oqNipY

Two days, two powerful conversations with Prof. Alf Gunvald Nilsen (Centre for Asian Studies in Africa, University of Pretoria) at UvA. 📚 Day 1: The book journey A full room of PhDs and early-career scholars asked burning questions: How do you transform a dissertation into a compelling first book? What do editors really look for? Prof. Nilsen shared candid insights from his own publishing path, sparking lively exchanges and leaving participants inspired and better equipped for the road ahead. ⚖️ Day 2: The Southern Interregnum In his lecture, Nilsen challenged the “rising Global South” narrative. Drawing on his new collaborative monograph Southern Interregnum (Manchester UP, 2025), he traced how elites in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa attempt to reconcile accumulation with legitimation in an age of precarity and protest. With Gramsci as guide, he framed this turbulent conjuncture as an “interregnum” where authoritarian populisms thrive as “morbid symptoms.” Warm thanks to Prof. Nilsen and to everyone who joined. Hosted under the ERC project China (Africa) Fashion Power and the ASCA Global Africa Seminar Series.

That’s a wrap on our final ASCA Global Africa seminar of the semester! We explored urban dreams and national image-making across the African continents with the forthcoming books of Dr. Andrea Pollio and Dr. Maria Repnikova, moderated by Dr. Carwyn Morris. Pollio unpacked “Silicon Elsewhere”, tracing Nairobi’s tech aspirations in the shadow of “Global China” beyond a (de)colonial framework, while Repnikova discussed China’s Image-Making in Africa, examining how China crafts soft power amid Western narratives while interacting with the Ethiopian elites. We ended with Hangfeng Chen’s poetic film “I Swam to Africa in My Dream” — a surreal collage of identity, memory, and shifting empires.

Our ERC CAFP team had such a great experience at the Africa-Asia 3 Conference-Festival at Universite Cheikh Anta Diop as well as in Dakar, Senegal - to learn about its history, culture, and everyday life. Salute to the amazing International Institute for Asian Studies team who spent over a year to put these meaningful collaborations together.

In this ASCA Global Africa research seminar, “Afro-Sino Tech Futures”, Dr. Seyram Avle (UMass Amherst) delivered a compelling talk titled “Other Futures? Afro-Sino Entanglements in the Digital Age.” Drawing from her multi-sited ethnographic research across Africa, China, and the United States, she critically examined prevailing narratives that champion digital technologies as universal solutions for a better life. Dr. Avle challenged this optimism by highlighting the often-overlooked consequences of such technologies, including environmental degradation, excessive consumption, pervasive datafication, and a constrained imagination regarding alternative technological futures. Complementing this perspective, Dr. Wei Wang (UvA) presented “Data Grabbing or Deep Datafication? Rethinking SHEIN’s Data Colonialism.” His talk delved into the inner workings of SHEIN, the China-based e-commerce giant and the world’s largest online-only fast fashion retailer. Through interviews with SHEIN employees and suppliers, Dr. Wang illuminated the complexities of platform capitalism. He shed light on the practical challenges faced by SHEIN’s data analysts during multi-level data processing, revealing the intricate dynamics and limitations of the company’s data-centric operations. Together, these presentations offered a nuanced exploration of Afro-Sino technological entanglements, urging a critical reassessment of dominant tech narratives and their implications for global futures.

This enlightening ASCA Global Africa 2nd Seminar explored China’s far-reaching influence in Africa through two unique lenses: 🔹Dr. Miriam Driessen (Univ. of Oxford) unpacked how *Ethiopian lawyers mediate Chinese investment* in Africa. Drawing from her fieldwork on labor, migration, and law, she revealed the complex role legal professionals play in bridging global capital and local realities. 🔹Dr. Nicholas Loubere (Lund Univ.) delved into Ghana’s Chinese gold rush, challenging narratives of “illegality” to expose how criminality is constructed around resource extraction—and what this reveals about power, mobility, and global inequalities. Moderated by Dr. Johanna von Pezold (UvA), the discussion sparked critical conversations about development, displacement, and the human stories behind transnational economies.

Moderated by Dr. Jupiter Wang, this year our first Global Africa seminar “Building Futures, Shaping Resistance: Nairobi in Focus” was kicked off by Dr. Elisa Tamburo who gave a talk entitled ‘Negotiating the City: Builders, Planners, Dwellers and the Making of Nairobi’. She is a social anthropologist and UKRI-Marie Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard and the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford. Her project ‘Negotiating the City’ focuses on urban planning and dwelling amidst China-built urban infrastructure in Nairobi, Kenya. It was followed by ERC PhD candidate Fairuzah Atchulo (Media Studies, University of Amsterdam) who presented her new paper named ‘From Your Size to My Size: Dressing and Consumer Agency among Kenyan Consumers’. She is affiliated with the ERC Project China Africa Fashion Power under which she researches on the consumption end of the China-Africa global value chains in Kenya and Mozambique.

Prof Tommy Tse, Associate Professor from the Media Studies Department at the University of Amsterdam, recently presented a thought-provoking talk as part of the Media, Culture and Creative Cities Speaker Series at the Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong. Prof Tse, a specialist in media and cultural industries, shared insights from his research project titled “China Fashion Power – Fashioning Power through South-South Interaction: Re-thinking Creativity, Authenticity, Cultural Mediation and Consumer Agency along China-Africa Fashion Value Chains”. Supported by the European Research Council’s Consolidator Grant, Prof Tse’s research challenges the traditional "Eurocentric" perspective on cultural production. By focusing on China-Africa fashion value chains, he re-evaluates concepts such as creativity, authenticity, cultural mediation, and consumer agency through a Global South lens, disrupting the North-South binary. Prof Tse’s talk delved deeply into the significance of re-assessing the theoretical North-South divide. By examining concepts such as creativity, authenticity, cultural mediation, and consumer agency, he highlighted how these elements operate along the China-Africa fashion value chains. His research offers a fresh perspective on the global fashion industry, moving away from the dominant narratives shaped by the Global North. During the talk, Prof Tse discussed the diverse methodologies employed in his research. These included ethnography, semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, visual and semiotic analysis, and wardrobe archival study. By integrating these methods, he provided a holistic view of the fashion value chains and the intricate cultural exchanges between China and Africa.

The CAFP team organized the exhibition Ready for Shipment: A Visual Archive of Fashion, Beauty & Creativity in China, Africa and the Multiple Souths at the Nairobi Gallery. Contributors: Paul Cox, Hangfeng Chen, Qidi Feng, PJ, Zhuoying Li, Faye Yingfei Liang, and Dilalya Romeo David. Co-curated by: CAT and Qidi Feng. Poster designed by: CAT and Qidi Feng. Photography by: Qidi Feng, Dilayla Romeo David, and Yingfei Faye Liang. Print production & setup by: Fairuzah M.M. Atchulo, Shengjun Jin, Shi Lin, and Jupiter Wei Wang.

This full-day event included one thematic talk and four panel discussions, covering the following key themes: De-centering creativity, Global Africa as method, Fashion supply chains, Creative resilience, Web3, AI and creative labour, Fast fashion, Brands, labels and authenticity, and African creative industries. From Europe, US and Asia, it is important for many of us to come to the “center” of our academic research, to sit among nearly 70 African fashion designers and creative professionals, models, artists, journalists, sustainable fashion advocates, the aspiring traders and creative entrepreneurs, and university students for genuinely open and meaningful dialogues. Across the 5 panels throughout the day, we had in total 140+ online registrants and 8 online presenters/moderators actively participating or listening in globally. Our beautiful give-away tote bags also personify the theme of this workshop: African design is aesthetically and culturally hybrid - co-designed by creators across cultures and regions, made in China, tailored in Africa, circulating online and moving offline, and also subject to the perceived meanings of users.

During the workshop, the INFS editors and various panel speakers exchanged ideas on the journal’s Special Issue (mid-2024) that aims to reimagine a world of fashion studies where scholars are sensitive to the merits of divergent ways of producing fashion knowledge and exercise critical awareness of their own methodological limits. Such a shift in methodological thinking allows novel, inductive approaches to thrive and enrich the interplay between theory and methodology in fashion scholarship. Panel speakers: INFS Editors, Marie-Aude Baronian, Rosie Findlay, Mary Hanlon, Misha Kavka, Vésma Kontere McQuillan, Diego Semerene, Tommy Tse, Johanna von Pezold, Sophie Wood, Paolo Volonté, and more.

Aurelie van de Peer (KU Leuven), Wei Jupiter Wang (UvA) and Tommy Tse (UvA) hosted the offline workshop ‘Sustainable Fashion Stories: New Convergences: Part 2’ at the Universiteitbibliotheek, University of Amsterdam. During this second workshop, Wei Jupiter Wang (UvA) explored the aesthetic, cultural and environmental implications of the global surge of Shein, a Chinese fast fashion e-tailer; Alexander Hoppe (Max Planck Institute) looked at how the geography and distribution of recognition creates value for shareholders and stakeholders in his study of the apparel industry’s production and consumption; Maeve McKeown (U of Groningen) investigated the responsibilities of both individuals and corporate actors in constituting structural injustice in the global garment industry; and lastly, Luuc Brans (KU Leuven) unpacked how fashion’s networks of sustainable changemakers further reproduces social inequality. Echoing our ERC project’s mission to decenter a Western-centric logic of knowledge production and rewrite the history of African fashion, his publication examines the evolution of fashion in Africa across time and space, also its contemporary fashion design industry on the cusp of global relevance. He also explored identity and meaning making through African fashion: as visual language in mediation, contention, and congruity between cultures in the Global South.

The CAFP team co-hosted the launch event of the International Journal of Fashion Studies' Special Issue 11.1 “B(l)ending Research Methods in Fashion Scholarship” at the City, University of London, where the journal’s co-editors, advisory board members, contributors as well as many fashion, media & cultural studies scholars come together and explore the divergent epistemological and methodological approaches to fashion as a research subject/object. This celebratory event not only marks the launch of this special issue but also serves as a space for scholars in fashion studies to reconnect and engage in meaningful dialogue. During the event, two of the issue’s editors, Dr Tommy Tse and Dr Diego Semerene led a panel discussion with several of the contributors. The authors of this issue include Dr. Marie-Aude Baronian (UvA), Dr. Ben Barry (Parsons School of Design), Dr. Daniel de las Heras Romano (Pratt Institute), Dr. Christine Delhaye (UvA), Dr. Francisco-José García-Ramos (UCM), Dr. Mary Hanlon(OC), Dr. Martina Karels (SFC), Prof. Misha Kavka (UvA), Dr. Sophie Kurkdjian (AUP), Prof. Vésma Kontere McQuillan(KUC), Dr. Niamh Moore (UoE), Mr. Álvaro Navarro Gaviño(UCM), Ms Philippa Nesbitt (TMU), Dr. Diego Semerene(UvA), Prof. Megan Strickfaden (UAlberta), Dr. Johanna von Pezold (UvA), Dr. Sophie Wood (BCU), and more.

In the 4th ASCA Global Africa research seminar, Ken Kweku Nimo, a Ghanaian PhD researcher at the Africa Leadership Centre, King’s College London, explores themes in African fashion, culture, and textile heritage and charts his academic journey through his book “Africa in Fashion: Luxury, Craft and Textile Heritage”. Echoing our ERC project’s mission to decenter a Western-centric logic of knowledge production and rewrite the history of African fashion, his publication examines the evolution of fashion in Africa across time and space, also its contemporary fashion design industry on the cusp of global relevance. He also explores identity and meaning making through African fashion: as visual language in mediation, contention, and congruity between cultures in the Global South.

On Dec 18 & Dec 19 2023, Prof. Giselinde Kuipers, Dr. Aurelie van de Peer and Luuc Brans hosted the hybrid workshop ‘Sustainable Fashion Stories: New Convergences’ at the Hollands College, KU Leuven, Belgium. During this two-day workshop, the KU Leuven team hoped to establish new collaborations for exploring sustainability in fashion, firmly grounded in diverse social sciences disciplines. Ysabel Nauwelaerts offered insights from management studies; Tommy Tse, Qidi Feng & Fairuzah Atchulo drew on media and cultural studies; Elise van der Laan brought in valuable practice-based sustainability insights; Rosie Findlay spoke from a feminist media studies perspective, whereas Luuc Brans and Aurelie van de Peer brought in cultural sociology. After this very first productive & meaningful meeting, we foresee further academic collaborations and social impact projects with this new research group in the coming years to go.

Qidi Feng and Fairuzah Atchulo are both researchers of the ERC China Africa Fashion Power Project. Qidi's presentation, entitled “Wig is fake hair, till you make it real: Multiple authenticities of wig business”, interrogates the intricacies of the wig business between China and Africa and the authenticities of hair that is navigated in this trade. Fairuzah's paper “Passive neo-colonialism: Examining neo-colonialism in global size systems”, exhumes the embedded colonial structures at play in standard size systems, their use in Kenya (East Africa), and their deriving forms of exclusions.

Aiming to facilitate critical discussions and dialogues on topics pertaining to “Africa”, and the global South as a whole. In this the Global Africa reading group strives to create a scholarly community that encompasses and accommodates the multitude of studies of and from Africa, and an avenue to keeping abreast with the terrains of discussions pertaining to our theorized notion of “multiple Souths”. This reading group thus combines aspects of a reading group and seminars, and aspires to bring together guest speakers with academic, artistic and/or professional contributions to and affiliations with the China Africa Fashion Power project and Africa, humanities and social sciences faculty members from different universities, Postdoctoral and PhD researchers as well as Master students. Keynote speakers included Dr. Erica de Greef and Mr. Lesiba Mabitsela; founders of the Africa Fashion Research Institute based in Cape Town (South Africa). Our ERC PhD researchers Fairuzah Atchulo and Qidi Feng also shared their ongoing pilot studies on the problems of fashion sizing and authenticit(ies) of wig/hair.

This seminar looked into Dr Tommy Tse's ERC project China Fashion Power. It investigates how, in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global power is manifested, negotiated, and resisted in people’s daily life in a South-South setting using fashion as an exemplary case.