Dr. Ben Barry

Co-Editor

parsons school of design & Toronto Metropolitan UNIVERSITY
 

Ben Barry (he/him) is Dean of Fashion at Parsons School of Design and Associate Professor at Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at Toronto Metropolitan University. As a fashion activist, educator, designer and researcher, he is devoted to intervening into fashion systems to systemically shift power and design a future where worldviews and bodies that are currently stigmatized are instead valued and desired. He was previously Chair of the School of Fashion at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada where he led the department through a deep transformation by embedding and prioritizing inclusion, decolonization and sustainability in the curriculum and culture.

Ben’s teaching and research centers the intersectional fashion experiences of disabled, fat, trans and queer people and engages them in the design of clothing, fashion media and fashion systems. He is currently the Principal Investigator of Crippling Masculinity, a research project that explores how disabled, D/deaf and mad-identified men and masculine people navigate the world and make new worlds through fashion. He has published in Fashion Theory, Textile, Gender & Society, Fat Studies, Harvard Business Review and the Business of Fashion, among other outlets, and he leads education programs on inclusive fashion practices for global brands and he shares his insights on these topics with international media.