Alex Esculapio

Alex Nora Esculapio is a lecturer in Historical and Critical Studies for the BA (Hons) Fashion Business, BA (Hons) Textiles and Business and BA (Hons) Fashion Communication and Business. Her research interests include historical and contemporary cultures of (un)sustainability, environmental history and humanities and queer ecologies. 

Alex's supervisory interests include historical and contemporary work on fashion, (un)sustainability and consumption - in particular research that seeks to contribute to decolonial futures by creating alternative knowledge to dominant Western-centric, technology-driven understandings of sustainability; visual and material culture approaches to environmental history and environmental humanities; historical research on alternative consumption practices; historical and practice-based work on gender studies and queer crafts.

Alex holds a BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures from University of Milan, Italy, and Uppsala University, Sweden, an MA in Fashion Studies from Parsons the New School for Design and a PhD from University of Brighton. She is a member of the Centre for Design History (CDH) at University of Brighton and a member of the Union for Concerned Researchers in Fashion (UCRF).

Her interests in cultures of sustainability and critical approaches to sustainability in fashion began with an interest in slow fashion and clothing libraries as spaces of alternative fashion consumption. Her interests led her to pursue a PhD at University of Brighton, which examined the relationship between structures of feeling and clothing durability in contemporary fashion design, design activism and visual culture. Her chapter for the edited volume Slowness in Fashion (2020) was based off of her PhD methodology and conceptual framework.

After completing her PhD, her research has largely focused on histories of (un)sustainability in the fields of fashion, design and material culture. In January 2022 she co-organised a one-day international conference entitled "Fashioning Sustainment," which later led to a special issue of the journal Fashion Studies based on the conference co-edited with Annebella Pollen. She's currently working on several publications based on her PhD. 

Alex has also lectured and researched extensively on queer theory, history and trans studies in relation to fashion and dress. She's published about transmisogyny and trans models in the British press between the 1960s and early 1970s and served as a guest editor for the 2023 issue of Viscose journal dedicated to fashion as a form of trans cultural production.

Building on her previous scholarship, Alex's current research looks at the intersections of environmental humanities, environmental history and fashion and design histories and queer ecologies in fashion. 

Parallel to her work in academia, Alex has also contributed as a writer and editor to a number of publications, including BIAS, Vestoj: The Journal of Sartorial Matters, Fashion Projects, The Fashion Studies Journal and Viscose.