Role
is Associate Professor of Fashion and Sustainability in Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé School of Art & Design. Through design-led participatory research, she explores plural possibilities for post-growth fashion systems: alternative ways of living with our clothes that meet our fundamental human needs and respect ecological limits.
Amy was awarded the prestigious in 2024.
Amy coordinates the Sustainable Transitions group in the Fashion & Textile Research Centre, as well as climate action work across the School.
Career overview
After studying BA and MA in fashion and textile design, Amy ran her experimental knitwear label, , for ten years. She sold her knitwear nationally and internationally and received awards including the Crafts Council Development Award. Her work was featured in many publications, from Vogue to Fashion Theory.
Amy studied for a at Birmingham City University. Entitled Folk Fashion: Amateur Re-knitting as a Strategy for Sustainability, this research used a participatory workshop-based methodology to generate new insights about experiences of making, remaking and fashion and developed into the project and solo exhibition.
Following her PhD, Amy was a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, working on an AHRC-funded project that explored how design can contribute to the revitalisation of culturally significant designs, products and practices. She joined NTU in 2016, initially teaching Design, Culture and Context within the Fashion, Textiles and Knitwear Design department.
Amy has been an investigator on three AHRC grants since 2019. Two were funded research networks: aimed to foster critical dialogue around participatory textile making in research and practice, while interrogated connections between craft practices and ideas of the commons and informed the development of touring exhibition . In 2021 Amy was awarded a AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship for her project.
Amy has authored, co-authored and edited four books, with a fifth, Fashion Fictions: Imagining Sustainable Worlds (Bloomsbury), currently in press. She is a board member and treasurer of the , an international organisation working for systems change in fashion.
Research areas
Through design-led participatory research, Amy explores plural possibilities for post-growth fashion systems: alternative ways of living with our clothes that meet our fundamental human needs and respect ecological limits.
The main vehicle for this research is her project, which brings people together to imagine, explore and enact alternative fashion worlds as an unconventional route to real-world change. Amy founded the project in 2020 and it has already involved more than 5000 participants via over 100 activities in schools, universities and communities worldwide.
The research is generating valuable insights into people's desires for sustainable fashion systems. These insights are revealed via common themes that can be identified across diverse visions, from nature connection and ritual to organisation and rebellion. The research is also illuminating the value of collective imagination activities for sustainable transitions.
Real-world impacts include the generation of a vibrant and varied repository of creative ideas and artefacts; new thinking about the real-world fashion system and an expanded sense of possibility and agency; and intended and actual changes in individual and collective clothes-related behaviour.
Amy has supervised three PhDs to completion:
- Sally Cooke, ‘Material Encounters: fashion sustainability examined through beginners’ experiences of learning to sew clothes at home’
- Iryna Kucher (Designskolen Kolding), ‘Designing Engagements with Mending: An exploration of amateur clothing repair practices in Western and post-Soviet contexts’
- Emily Rickard, ‘KnitWell: Exploring creative, open-ended knitting as a form of journaling to record emotions, with consideration for mental wellbeing’
She currently supervises five PhDs:
- Elsa Ball, 'Negotiating fashionable identity through hair and the salon: implications for sustainability and fashion'
- Beth Pagett, 'Natural dyeing in contemporary craft cultures: intra-actions between humans, nature and materials'
- Megha Chauhan, ‘Intercultural Frameworks to Re-Search Textile and Nature Partnerships: Rhythms and Rituals of Wool from Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat’
- Selene States (Bauhaus University Weimar), 'A Suite of Changes: A Political Timeline of the "Pantsuit" 1919–1946'
- Gemma Metheringham, 'Mapping Pathways to Displacement'
External activity
- Member of AHRC Peer Review College (2019–)
- Regular peer reviewer for Bloomsbury and for journals including Craft Research, Fashion Practice, Fashion Theory and Journal of Textile Design, Research and Practice
- External examiner, PhD examinations (2019–)
- External examiner, MA Fashion Futures, London College of Fashion (2018–2023) / MA Textiles & MA Surface Pattern, University of Wales Trinity St David (2017–2021)
- Academic appointment panellist / tenure reviewer, University of Borås / Designskolen Kolding / Parsons School of Design
Sponsors and collaborators
Collaborators include:
Publications
Books
Twigger Holroyd, A., Gordon, J. F. & Hill, C. (2023). Historical Perspectives on Sustainable Fashion: Inspiration for Change (second edition). London: Bloomsbury.
Twigger Holroyd, A. & Hill, H. (eds) (2019). Fashion Knitwear Design. Marlborough: Crowood Press.
Walker, S., Evans, M., Cassidy, T., Jung, J. & Twigger Holroyd, A. (eds) (2018). Design Roots: Culturally Significant Designs, Products, and Practices. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Twigger Holroyd, A. (2017). Folk Fashion: Understanding Homemade Clothes. London: I.B.Tauris.
Selected journal articles
Aspinall, M. & Twigger Holroyd, A. (2024). Fashion fictions: student experiences of designing sustainable fashion worlds. Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education.
Shercliff, E. & Twigger Holroyd, A. (2020). Stitching Together: Ethical dimensions and innovative approaches to participatory textile making (Introduction to guest-edited Stitching Together Special Issue: Part 2). Journal of Arts & Communities 11(1-2), pp.3–11.
Shercliff, E. & Twigger Holroyd, A. (2020). Stitching Together: Participatory textile making as an emerging methodological approach to research (Introduction to guest-edited Stitching Together Special Issue: Part 1). Journal of Arts & Communities 10(1-2), pp.5–18.
Twigger Holroyd, A. (2018). Reknit revolution: knitwear design for the domestic circular economy. Journal of Textile Design Research & Practice 6(1), pp.89–111.
Twigger Holroyd, A., Cassidy, T., Evans, M. & Walker, S. (2017). Wrestling with tradition: revitalising the Orkney chair and other culturally significant crafts. Design & Culture 9(3), pp.283–99.
Twigger Holroyd, A. (2017). From stitch to society: a multi-level and participatory approach to design research. Design Issues 33(3), pp.11-24.
Selected book chapters
Twigger Holroyd, A. (2023). Fashion Fictions. In: L. Gardner and D. Mohajer va Pesaran (eds), Radical Fashion Exercises: A Workbook of Modes and Methods. Amsterdam: Valiz.
Twigger Holroyd, A. (2024). Writing sustainable fashion worlds. In: A. Schramme & N. Verboven (eds), Sustainability and the Fashion Industry: Can Fashion Save the World? Abingdon: Routledge.
Twigger Holroyd, A. (2018). Digital transformations, amateur making, and the revitalization of traditional textile crafts. In: S. Walker, M. Evans, T. Cassidy, J. Jung & A. Twigger Holroyd (eds) Design Roots: Culturally Significant Designs, Products, and Practices. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp.291-303.
Press expertise
- fashion and sustainability
- speculation and fashion
- design and sustainability
- amateur making (mending, knitting, sewing)
- homemade clothes
Press
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NEWS
17 October 2024An expert in fashion sustainability from Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé (NTU) has become the institution’s first to be awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize.
ntu.ac.uk/about-us/news/news-articles/2024/10/fashion-expert-wins-a-top-academic-award