项目/合作

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.

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.