Profile
Britta is an award-winning designer and pioneer of sustainable fashion, working at the intersection of practice, academia, and global industry networks. Drawing on early training in pattern recognition and fashion as an embodied practice, Britta’s research is guided by a critical ‘anthropology of’ design lens. A lens that is both creative and communicative with a focus on transnational designer experiences, actions, and material participations as a way of being informed about sustainability and regenerative practices beyond the constraints of industry and consumer culture.
With over 25 years of working Internationally within fashion’s complex textile systems and 18 years of enterprise experience working between the UK and Bali with 3 start-up enterprises, Britta has strong global alliances. A proven track record of fostering intercultural collaborations producing quality outputs as a designer and mentor in the creative industries as well as advising on fashion pedagogy. Britta thrives in environments where creativity and regeneration intersect, leading through empathy and always striving to bring out the best in people.
Britta’s research develops upon a decolonial aesthetic informed by design anthropology and critical thought, exploring social change’s ethical and artistic dimension through cultural relocations and multi-perspective storytelling. Specialising in participatory, dialogical and multisensory ethnography such as sensory cartography and storytelling that draws upon embodied knowledge to understand the structuring influences on the body and how bodies acquire meaning in a particular context. Sustainable futures can emerge through these living stories, ecologies, and genealogies. A generative approach that builds upon principles of emergence, contingency, and improvisation working with ‘possibility’, rather than prediction. Knowledge generated through ‘other ways of knowing’ such as creative actions informed by physical, corporeal, embodied, and embedded processes that lead us to question - What can tomorrow’s future designers be making? Making is at the heart of Creative futures, as it is the site of social praxis and repair through material participation the production of alternatives.
Academic background
Britta received a BA (Hons) degree in Fashion Print from (UAL) Central St Martins in 1995, a Masters in Sustainable Design from Brighton University in 2017 and a PhD from the Institute for Design Innovation, Loughborough University, London in 2022 with the thesis title: Many worlds meeting. Unsettling design practice at the intersection of mobility and possibility.
Research
The original thesis titled, Many worlds meeting. Unsettling design practice at the intersection of mobility and possibility, set out to study a small group of globally mobile designers in a transnational design community in Bali, Indonesia, to highlight co-existing perspectives in the decolonising debate by examining how geo-political historicity permeates throughout epistemologies and ontologies and manifests through creative practices such as design. This practice-led research project is based on Britta’s working life and transcultural experiences as a nomadic subject (Braidotti, 1994). As a design practitioner living and working in Bali, I recognised patterns in the expressions of the community of designers, whom I have named Designer Beyonders for the pragmatic reasons of selection and to draw upon the creativity research of Paul Torrance (1993) from the adjacent field of psychology. This study's Designer Beyonders demonstrate significant sensibilities that have implications for decolonising design epistemologies and practices through deeper relational connections between people[s] and their environment[s] through actual experiences that are socially embedded and embodied within practice[s].
Interests and activities
Professional memberships and activities
- Convenor at DRS Sustainability SIG
- DESIS More-than-Human Research community
Publications
- Boyer, B. (2024). The Visitor’s Hut: An Integrative Methodology. Diseña, (25), Article.4.
- Boyer, B., Wernli, M., Koria, M., & Santamaria, L. (2022). Our Own Metaphor: Tomorrow is Not for Sale. World Futures, 78(8), 524–532.
- Wernli, M., & Boyer, B. (2021). ‘Breathful’ design in breathless times. Strategic Design Research Journal, 175–186.
- 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 (virtual).
- Boyer, B. (2019) Gender equality in tourism, by design. 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.
Media: video ways of knowing
- Boyer, Britta; Prendeville, Sharon (2024). Design Ecologies Participatory Video. Loughborough University. Media.
- 2023 Boyer, B. Pochi weaving studio, Myanmar.
- Boyer, B. Yangon – Banana fiber, Myanmar
- Boyer, B. Lotus & Silk – Inle Lake, Myanmar
- Boyer, B. Nainglon Village – natural dyeing, Myanmar
- Boyer, B. Shwe Chi weaving interview, Myanmar
- Boyer, B. Kayin State – Backstrap weavers, Myanmar
- 2022 Boyer, B. Sensory cartographies, Bali
- Boyer, B. Blue Alchemy, Loughborough University. Media.
- 2018 Boyer, B. Paradise Paradigm, Bali
Peer Review Activities
- Journal manuscript review: Special issue of PUBLIC on the Pluriverse 2023
- Conference abstract reviews: Pivot 2022
- Journal manuscript review: Tourism Geographies 2021
- Book reviews: Gender Equality and Tourism: Beyond Empowerment by Stroma Cole Published by CABI, 2018
Presentations
- 2023 Boyer, B. Sensory Cartography: mapping possibility. Two-hour workshop for 3rd International Conference of Possibility Studies, DCU, Dublin, Ireland.
- 2023 Boyer, B. Designing futurity from a complex we perspective. Presentation for UAL MA Regenerative Design – Discussion on ethics (virtual)
- 2022 Boyer, B. & Wernli M. ‘Breathful’ design in breathless times. Presentation for the opening of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom.
- 2022 Boyer, B. Decolonizing Methodologies. Presentation for Brighton University, Brighton, United Kingdom.
- 2022 Boyer, B. The future(s) of Fashion. Research Community Evening at Istituto Marangoni, United Kingdom (virtual).
- 2021 Boyer, B. Re-mapping the human. Sensory cartography as a tool of integration. Presentation for the Pivot 2021 virtual conference.
- 2021 Boyer, B. Unsettled design perspectives. Presentation at the North American PhD by design symposium (virtual).
- 2021 Boyer, B. Uncommon perspectives: Feeling our way back to each other. Presentation at the Centre for Sensory Studies conference (Virtual).
- 2020 Boyer, B. Social sculptures as world making activity: Creativity narratives from Bali. Presentation for the Pivot 2020 virtual conference.
- 2019 Boyer, B. Creativity in transition design; can designers go ‘beyond’ to create positive sociocultural experience. Presentation at the Nordes conference, Alto University, Helsinki.