Profile
Ben Barry (he/him) is Dean and Visiting Associate Professor of Equity and Inclusion at Parsons’ School of Fashion. As a fashion activist, educator, designer and researcher, he is devoted to intervening into fashion systems to systemically shift power and design a future where worldviews and bodies that are currently stigmatized are instead valued and desired. He was previously Chair of the School of Fashion at Ryerson University in Canada where he led the department through a deep transformation by embedding and prioritizing inclusion, decolonization and sustainability in the curriculum and culture.
Ben’s teaching and research centers the intersectional fashion experiences of disabled, fat, trans and queer people and engages them in the design of clothing, fashion media and fashion systems. He is currently the Principal Investigator of Crippling Masculinity, a research project that explores how disabled, D/deaf and mad-identified men and masculine people navigate the world and make new worlds through fashion. He has published in Fashion Theory, Textile, Gender & Society, Fat Studies, Harvard Business Review and the Business of Fashion, among other outlets, and he leads education programs on inclusive fashion practices for global brands and he shares his insights on these topics with international media.
Degrees Held
BA Women's and Gender Studies, University of Toronto
MPhil Innovation, Strategy and Organization, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge
PhD Management, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge
Recent Publications
Barry, Ben, De Villa, Alexis, Nesbitt, Philippa, McMullin, Kristina and Megan Strickfaden. (Forthcoming). Crip masculinities and everyday dress: Intersectional narratives of imagination, access and ownership. In Vicki Karaminas, Adam Geczy and Pamela Church Gibson (eds.), Fashionable Masculinities: Queers, Pimp Daddies and Lumbersexual, Rutgers University Press.
Barry, Ben (2021). How to transform fashion education—A manifesto for equity, inclusion and decolonization. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 8(1), 123-130.
Barry, Ben, Evans, Calla and May Friedman. (2021). Fattening fabulousness: The joys and risks of troubling gender through fat fashion. Fat Studies, online first.
Reilly, Andrew and Ben Barry (eds.). (2020). Crossing Gender Boundaries: Fashion to Create, Disrupt and Transcend, London: Intellect Books.
Barry, Ben and Daniel Drak. (2019). Intersectional interventions into queer and trans liberation: Youth resistance against right-wing populism through fashion hacking. Fashion Theory, 23(6), 679-709.
Barry, Ben (2019). Fabulous masculinities: Refashioning the fat and disabled male body. Fashion Theory, 23(2), 275-307.
Barry, Ben and Nathaniel Weiner. (2019). Suited for success: Suits, status and hybrid masculinity. Men and Masculinities, 22(2), 151–176.
Barry, Ben. (2018). (Re)fashioning masculinity: Social identity and context in men's hybrid masculinities through dress, Gender & Society, 34(4), 638–662.
Barry, Ben. (2017) Enclothed knowledge: The fashion show as an arts-informed research method. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 16(3), Art 2.
Barry, Ben and Dylan Martin. (2016). Fashionably fit: Young men’s dress decisions and body anxieties. Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, 14(3), 3-22.
Barry, Ben and Barbara J. Phillips. (2016). Destabilizing the gaze towards male fashion models: Expanding men’s gender and sexuality identities. Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion, 3(1), 17-35.
Barry, Ben and Barbara J. Phillips. (2016). The fashion engagement grid: Understanding men’s responses to fashion advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 35(3), 438-464.
Barry, Ben and Dylan Martin. (2016). Gender rebels: Inside the wardrobes of young gay men with subversive style. Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, 3(2), 225-250.