Speakers

Prof. Maxine Craig
University of California Davis

Maxine Craig is Professor in the Women and Gender Studies program and Chair of the Designated Emphasis in Feminist Theory & Research. She received her doctorate in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Sorry I Don’t Dance: Why Men Refuse to Move (Oxford University Press 2013).  Sorry I Don’t Dance takes readers to dance floors from 1900 to the present to see the rearticulation of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Her book, Ain’t I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race. (Oxford University Press 2002) was the winner of the Best Book of 2002 award on the Political History of Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the U.S by the Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics of the American Political Science Association. Professor Craig is past chair of the American Sociological Association Section on Race, Gender and Class. She is a deputy editor of Gender & Society. 


Prof. Ruth Holliday
University of Leeds

Ruth Holliday has been working at the University of Leeds since 2002, first as Director of Studies, then Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. She was made Professor in the School of Sociology and Social Policy February 2008. Before Gender Studies, she worked in Cultural Studies, Sociology, Business Studies, and, initially, electronics so interdisciplinarity is a key feature of her academic career. Her research interests are primarily located in social and cultural theories of the body and identity particularly as they apply to class, gender and sexuality. Most recently she led an international ESRC funded research project (Grant Reference RES-062-23-2796) exploring the phenomenon of Cosmetic Surgery Tourism - a form of medical travel where people go abroad for procedures to improve their appearance. She has been working on cosmetic surgery for more than ten years and have published on CS and classed bodies, men’s CS and CS and globalization. Her other recent project is a co-authored book with Tracey Potts on Kitsch, which traces the shifting definition of a specific form of material culture from early modernity to the present day. 


Prof. Susan Kaiser
University of California Davis

Susan B. Kaiser is Professor of Textiles and Clothing, and Women and Gender Studies, and is a member of the Cultural Studies Graduate Groups at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of The Social Psychology of Clothing: Symbolic Appearances in Context (2nd edition, revised, Fairchild Publications) and over 80 articles in academic journals ranging from Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, Fashion Theory, Cultural Studies, Symbolic Interaction, and Sociological Inquiry to the Journal of Consumer Culture. She is a Fellow and Past President of the International Textile and Apparel Association and serves on the Editorial Board of Fashion Theory. Her current research focuses on fashion theory in conversation with feminist cultural studies, the production-consumption interface in the transnational textile/apparel complex, and (re)constructions of masculinity through style and fashion.


Prof. Patricia Soley-Beltran
Independent scholar

Patricia Soley-Beltran holds a PhD in Sociology of Gender (University of Edinburgh) and an MA in Cultural History (University of Aberdeen). She lectures on Gender Theory, Sociology of the Body, and Sociology of Fashion in several Spanish universities. She was Honorary Fellow, Sociology Department, University of Edinburgh (2008-2011) and is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Critical Studies of Fashion and Beauty. She has published books and papers on Judith Butler’s performative theory of gender; on the Psy-sciences aetiology of ‘gender identity’ and transexuality, its bioethical and legal aspects; and on visual representations of hegemonic bodily beauty as normative ‘model identities’. Highly committed to disseminating knowledge, she regularly gives public talks, features in mass media as expert, writes for non-academic publications and collaborates with artists. She is currently working on a popularising essay on fashion models based on her academic research. In a former life, she worked as model, actress and TV presenter. See more in www.patriciasoley.com.


Prof. Efrat Tseëlon 
University of Leeds

Professor Efrat Tseëlon trained in social psychology and cultural analysis and is Chair of Fashion Theory at the School of Design, University of Leeds. Since receiving her PhD from Oxford on Communicating via Clothing she has developed the multi-disciplinary perspective of Critical Fashion. Tseëlon has contributed to fashion scholarship in extending the research agenda from designer fashion to ordinary clothes, shifting the focus from stereotype approach of ceremonial costumes to wardrobe approach of everyday clothes, and from fixed to fluid meanings. She pioneered methods from marketing and qualitative social science that moved the perspective of fashion research from clothes and clothes-makers, to clothes wearers and consumers.Tseëlon instigated Intellect Books series of fashion studies, and is the editor in chief of Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty. In her books The masque of femininity (1995) and Masquerade & Identities (2001) she developed the theory of fashion as an ideology of gender construction, and of masquerade as a technology of identity critique.  In Fashion Ethics (2013) she analysed ethical fashion as ideological discourse.


Prof. Xifang Zhao
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing

Zhao Xifang is a Chief Researcher in Institute of Literature and Professor in Graduate College at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as well as Deputy Director of Department of Chinese Modern Literature and Vice President of Chinese Socity of Translation Studies. In 1998 he graduated from Graduate College at  the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences with a Ph.D in Literature. In 2005-2006 he got a Fulbright Scholar from the U.S Department of State and worked as an Associate in Harvard-Yenching Institute. His research interests are located between literature and history. His most appreciated works include such as "Stories of Hong Kong", first published by Sanlian Publishing House in June 2003, "Postcolonialism and Taiwan Literature", "Post-colonialism" and "Translation and the Practice of Discourse in the New Period".