Sophie Barr

Biography

Sophie Barr is the Course Leader for the BA (Hons) Critical Practice in Fashion Media (CPFM) at London College of Fashion. CPFM is a distinctive fashion media and communication course that positions fashion as a powerful tool through which to critically engage, confront and intervene in the most urgent issues facing us today. Fashion activism, systems thinking, speculation, degrowth and ‘storytelling for change’ form the foundation of the curriculum alongside methodologies for measuring impact with real audiences and communities. Students leverage the tools of fashion media and communication to create positive change with a focus on social, racial and climate justice.

Sophie is committed to reshaping the landscape of fashion communication in HE through her teaching, scholarship and knowledge exchange projects. She is currently collaborating with colleagues in Ghana to develop her understanding of waste colonialism and centre fashion epistemologies from the global South in the Fashion Communication curriculum.

Throughout her academic career Sophie has been actively involved in academic and practice-based research in the arts and humanities. Her outputs range across practice, theory and hybrid forms, including delivering papers, practice-based research and art work at national and international academic conferences and exhibitions.

In her media art practice Sophie has worked with moving image, still image, print and installation to explore a range of themes, including the visual culture of the Anthropocene; feminist and postcolonial positions on ways of living in climate crisis; the global fashion city and austerity, creative AI and the networked image. Her work is informed by new materialist frameworks, in particular, the work of posthuman scholar Rosi Braidotti, eco-philosophers Donna Haraway and Timothy Morton, and materialist media theorist Grant Bollmer.

Sophie has a BA (Hons) in Fine Art, an MA in Cultural and Critical Studies, and an MA in Fine Art with Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. In 2024 Sophie became an Associate Member of Centre for Sustainable Fashion at LCF. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of Fashion activist group, Fashion Act Now.