Kelly Dearsley

Biography

Kelly Dearsley is the Associate Dean of the School of Media and Communication at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London. She began her career in advertising working with clients in the entertainment and the creative industries before embarking on a career in education. Kelly specializes in fashion communication and is particularly interested in the role technology plays in the human-technology-world relation. She teaches lived experience research drawing on postphenomenological methodologies to investigate pre-reflective aspects of experience and their influence on collective becoming.

Kelly holds a Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Photography from the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, and a Master of Arts in Image and Communication from Goldsmiths College, University of the London. Her film and performance projects have been screened and performed at numerous festivals and her fashion photography has been published in magazines such as i-D and Dazed and Confused.

Kelly has twenty years experience teaching fashion media and communication. She has chaired validation panels, and examined courses in the UK, China, Singapore and Sri Lanka and designed, validated and delivered courses in the UK and Hong Kong.

Kelly will submit her PhD thesis in December 2024. Her thesis investigates fashion in an age of transindividual disruption. Her empirical work investigates the lived experience of fashion media students’ encounters with fashion media when accessed through mobile phone technology. Kelly’s focus is on the feelings experienced by the fashion media user and the role feelings play in collective becoming.