Britta Boyer
Many worlds meeting. Unsettling design at the intersection of mobility and possibility.
Britta holds a PhD from the Institute for Design Innovation, Loughborough University, London, and an MA in Sustainable Design from the University of Brighton. She completed a BA in Fashion Design at Central St. Martins, London, in 1995, founded three international start-ups and was an early pioneer of the fashion sustainability movement in 1995, working with post-consumer denim waste for her own brand, Earth 33, with a grant from the Prince's Trust. Britta has previous creative industry experience as a distinguished designer with a history of accolades, including the Whistles New Designer of the Year (2006), IDEA (1998), and Barker Brown Creative Industry awards (1997).
Currently, a visiting scholar specialising in decolonising and regenerative design practice promoting social, environmental, and aesthetic literacies. Demonstrated expertise in complex systems and relational approaches within projects that mediate the intersection of practice, enterprise, and academia. Experienced in employing sensory ethnographies and creative methodological approaches that support change-thinking and allow experimentation and active engagement in meaningful research and learning experiences. For example, building positive projects that call upon global networks, working across sectors, disciplines and generations that embed and embody decolonising and regenerative principles. Britta co-led a British Council supported, connection through culture (CTC), research project in Southeast Asia; Weaving Ecologies: Stories of Material Culture and Community from Myanmar and was invited to participate alongside maker communities, Tagbanua weavers and craft makers of Tina, Aborlan, Palawan and an online community of the (UAL) Master Regenerative Design, Central Saint Martins (See more about the project on the website); both projects explore complex textile systems, weaving ecologies and weaving of shared values.
PhD research description
Britta's research develops upon a decolonial aesthesis informed by design anthropology and critical thought [feminist and global social theory]. The thesis work understood through Braidotti's nomadic theory, titled Many Worlds Meeting. Unsettling design at the intersection of mobility and possibility, explores epistemic decolonisation, and the regenerative practices of a small group of transnational Designer Beyonders situated [though not limited to] in Bali, Indonesia. Bali is understood through the lens of complex ethnocultural positioning that encompassing diverse lifestyles and cultures, a place of ‘becoming’ emphasising movement rather than stasis, and a multi-cultural design community entangled within more profound cultural traditions. The design research includes an auto-ethnographic perspective that reflects Britta’s own position in cultures of design and the broader cultural realm. Britta specialises in multisensory and participatory ethnography, emphasising storytelling, immersion, reflection, and participant-led interpretations that explore ways that the non-Western context can inform Western design practice and pedagogy?
PhD supervisors
Britta's PhD is supervised by Professor Mikko Koria, Dr Laura Santamaria and Dr Amalia G Sabiescu
Awards, grants or scholarships received
- Loughborough University Doctoral College studentship
- DRS Travel Bursary
- Santander Bank
Papers, publications and articles
Boyer, B., Wernli, M., Koria, M., & Santamaria, L. (2022). Our Own Metaphor: Tomorrow is Not for Sale. World Futures, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/02604027.2021.2014751
Wernli, M. & Boyer, B. (2021). ‘Breathful’ design in breathless times. Strategic Design Research Journal. Volume 14, number 01, January – April 2021. 175-186. https://doi.org/10.4013/sdrj.2021.141.15
Boyer, B. (2020) The story of ‘The Spirit of the Hibiscus’; worldmaking activities from Bali, in Leitão, R., Noel, L. and Murphy, L. (eds.), Pivot 2020: Designing a World of Many Centers - DRS Pluriversal Design SIG Conference, 4 June, held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2020.030
Britta Boyer (2019) Gender equality in tourism, by design, Tourism Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2018.1564780
Boyer, B. (2018). Other ways of seeing: film as digital materiality and interlocutor for community-based tourism relationships in Bali. International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 6(3), 276-296.